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The   Blue-Grass   Region 
of  Kentucky 

AND    OTHER   ARTICLES 


f^y^ 


I    I   ^   '    '     '  c'     'c     e'    c  «=      «V 


OLD  stonp:  homestead 


The   Blue- Grass   Region 
of  Kentucky 

AND  OTHER  KENTUCKY  ARTICLES 


BY 

JAMES   LANE  ALLEN 


ILLUSTRATED 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON ;  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
1907 

All  rights  r>!urafd 


Reprinted  March,  September,  1900; 
August,  1907. 


Copyright,  1892, 1899,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 


All  tights  reserved. 


PREFACE 


The  articles  herein  reprinted  from  Harper's 
and  The  Century  magazines  represent  work 
done  at  intervals  during  the  period  that  the 
author  was  writing  the  tales  already  published 
under  the  title  of  Flute  and  Violin. 

It  was  his  plan  that  with  each  descriptive 
article  should  go  a  short  story  dealing  with  the 
same  subject,  and  this  plan  was  in  part  wrought 
out.  Thus,  with  the  article  entitled  *'  Uncle 
Tom  at  Home "  goes  the  tale  entitled  "  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Kentucky";  and  with  the  article 
entitled  "  A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood  " 
goes  the  tale  entitled  *'The  White  Cowl."  In 
the  same  way,  there  were  to  be  short  stories 
severally  dealing  with  the  other  subjects  em- 
braced in  this  volume.  But  having  in  part 
wrought  out  this  plan,  the  author  has  let  it 
rest — not  finally,  perhaps,  but  because  in  the 
mean  time  he  has  found  himself  engaged  with 
other  themes. 

J.  L.  A. 


238142 


CONTENTS 


PASB 

The  Blue-Grass  Region 3 

Uncle  Tom  at  Home 45 

County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 87 

Kentucky  Fairs 117 

A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood    ....  149 

Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 181 

Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback  ...  217 

Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland    ....  249 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


OLD  STONE  HOMESTEAD 

SHEEP  IN  WOODLAWN  PASTURE 

NEGRO  CABINS 

CATTLE  IN  BLUE-GRASS  PASTURE 

HARRODSBURG  PIKE 

THE  MAMMY       

THE  COOK 

THE  PREACHER       

COURT-HOUSE  SQUARE,  LEXINGTON,  KENTUCKY 

THE   "tickler" 

GENTLEMEN   OF  LEISURE 

HARNESS  HORSES 

A  FORTNIGHTLY   SHAVE 

OLD  FERRY  AT  POINT  BURNSIDE 

NATIVE  TYPES 

FORD  ON  THE  CUMBERLAND 


Frontispiece 


Fac. 


Ingp.     6 

14 
18 
30 

58 

64 

78 

94 

96 

108 

132 

166 

218 

228 

274 


THE  BLUE-GRASS  REGION 


I 


ONE  might  well  name  it  Saxon  grass,  so 
much  is  it  at  home  in  Saxon  England, 
so  like  the  loveliest  landscapes  of 
green  Saxon  England  has  it  made  other  land- 
scapes on  which  dwell  a  kindred  race  in  Amer- 
ica, and  so  akin  is  it  to  the  type  of  nature  that 
is  peculiarly  Saxon  :  being  a  hardy,  kindly, 
beautiful,  nourishing  stock ;  loving  rich  lands 
and  apt  to  find  out  where  they  lie;  uproot- 
ing inferior  aborigines,  but  stoutly  defending 
its  new  domain  against  all  invaders ;  paying 
taxes  well,  with  profits  to  boot ;  thriving  best 
in  temperate  latitudes  and  checkered  sunshine ; 
benevolent  to  flocks  and  herds ;  and  allying  it- 
self closely  to  the  history  of  any  people  whose 
content  lies  in  simple  plenty  and  habitual 
peace — the  perfect  squire-and-yeoman  type  of 
grasses. 

In  the  earliest  spring  nothing  is  sooner  afield 
to  contest  possession  of  the  land  than  the  blue- 
grass.    Its  little  green  spear-points  are  the  first 
3 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

to  pierce  the  soft  rich  earth,  and  array  them- 
selves in  countless  companies  over  the  rolling 
landscapes,  while  its  roots  reach  out  in  every  di- 
rection for  securer  foothold.  So  early  does  this 
take  place,  that  a  late  hoar-frost  will  now  and 
then  mow  all  these  bristling  spear-points  down. 
Sometimes  a  slow-falling  sleet  will  incase  each 
emerald  blade  in  glittering  silver  ;  but  the  sun 
by-and-by  melts  the  silver,  leaving  the  blade 
unhurt.  Or  a  light  snowfall  will  cover  tufts 
of  it  over,  making  pavilions  and  colonnades 
with  white  roofs  resting  on  green  pillars.  The 
roofs  vanish  anon,  and  the  columns  go  on  si- 
lently rising.  But  usually  the  final  rigors  of 
the  season  prove  harmless  to  the  blue -grass. 
One  sees  it  most  beautiful  in  the  spring,  just 
before  the  seed  stalks  have  shot  upward  from 
the  flowing  tufts,  and  while  the  thin,  smooth, 
polished  blades,  having  risen  to  their  greatest 
height,  are  beginning  to  bend,  or  break  and  fall 
over  on  themselves  and  their  nether  fellows 
from  sheer  luxuriance.  The  least  observant 
eye  is  now  constrained  to  note  that  blue-grass 
is  the  characteristic  element  of  the  Kentucky 
turf — the  first  element  of  beauty  in  the  Ken- 
tucky landscape.  Over  the  stretches  of  wood- 
land pasture,  over  the  meadows  and  the  lawns, 
by  the  edges  of  turnpike  and  lane,  in  the  fence 
corners  —  wherever  its  seed  has  been  allowed 
4 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

to  flourish — its  spreads  a  verdure  so  soft  in  fold 
and  fine  in  texture,  so  entrancing  by  its  fresh- 
ness and  fertility,  that  it  looks  like  a  deep-ly- 
ing, thick-matted  emerald  moss.  One  thinks 
of  it,  not  as  some  heavy,  velvet -like  carpet 
spread  over  the  earth,  but  as  some  light,  seam- 
less veil  that  has  fallen  delicately  around  it, 
and  that  might  be  blown  away  by  a  passing 
breeze. 

After  this  you  will  not  see  the  blue-grass  so 
beautiful.  The  seed  ripens  in  June.  Already 
the  slender  seed  stalks  have  sprung  up  above 
the  uniform  green  level,  bearing  on  their  sum- 
mits the  fuzzy,  plumy,  purplish  seed-vessels; 
and  save  the  soft,  feathery  undulations  of 
these  as  the  wind  sweeps  over  them,  the  beauty 
of  the  blue-grass  is  gone.  Moreover,  certain 
robust  and  persistent  weeds  and  grasses  have 
been  growing  apace,  roughening  and  diversify- 
ing the  sward,  so  that  the  vista  is  less  charm- 
ing. During  July  and  August  the  blue-grass 
lies  comparatively  inactive,  resting  from  fructi- 
fication, and  missing,  as  well,  frequent  show- 
ers to  temper  the  sunshine.  In  seasons  of  se- 
vere drought  it  even  dies  quite  away,  leaving 
the  surface  of  the  earth  as  bare  and  brown  as 
a  winter  landscape  or  arid  plain.  Where  it 
has  been  closely  grazed,  one  may,  in  walking 
over  it,  stir  such  a  dust  as  one  would  raise  on 
5 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

a  highway  ;  and  the  upturned,  half  -  exposed 
rootlets  seem  entirely  dead.  But  the  moder- 
ated heats  and  the  gentle  rains  that  usually 
come  with  the  passing  of  summer  bring  on  a 
second  vigorous  growth,  and  in  the  course  of 
several  weeks  the  landscape  is  covered  with  a 
verdure  rivalling  the  luxuriance  of  spring. 

There  is  something  incongruous  in  this  mar- 
vellous autumnal  rejuvenescence  of  the  blue- 
grass.  All  nature  appears  content  and  rest- 
ing. The  grapes  on  the  sunward  slopes  have 
received  their  final  coloring  of  purple  and 
gold  ;  the  heavy  mast  is  beginning  to  drop  in 
the  forest,  followed  by  the  silent  lapse  of  rus- 
set and  crimson  leaves  ;  the  knee-deep  after- 
math has  paled  its  green  in  the  waiting  au- 
tumn fields  ;  the  plump  children  are  stretch- 
ing out  their  nut-stained  hands  towards  the 
first  happy  fire-glow  on  chill,  dark  evenings ; 
and  the  cricket  has  left  the  sere,  dead  garden 
for  a  winter  home  at  the  hearth.  Then,  lo  !  as 
if  by  some  freakish  return  of  the  spring  to  the 
edge  of  winter  the  pastures  are  suddenly  as 
fresh  and  green  as  those  of  May.  The  effect 
on  one  who  has  the  true  landscape  passion  is 
transporting  and  bewildering.  Such  contrasts 
of  color  it  is  given  one  to  study  nowhere  but  in 
blue-grass  lands.  It  is  as  if  the  seasons  were 
met  to  do  some  great  piece  of  brocading. 
6 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

One  sees  a  new  meaning  in  Poe's  melancholy 
thought  —  the  leaves  of  the  many  -  colored 
grass. 

All  winter  the  blue-grass  continues  green — 
it  is  always  gree?t^  of  course,  never  blue — and  it 
even  grows  a  little,  except  when  the  ground  is 
frozen.  Thus,  year  after  year,  drawing  need- 
ful nourishment  from  the  constantly  disinte- 
grating limestone  below,  flourishes  here  as  no- 
where else  in  the  world  this  wonderful  grass. 

Even  while  shivering  in  the  bleak  winds  of 
March,  the  young  lambs  frolicked  away  from 
the  distent  teats  of  the  ewes,  with  growing  rel- 
ish for  its  hardy  succulence,  and  by  -  and  -  by 
they  were  taken  into  market  the  sooner  and 
the  fatter  for  its  developing  qualities.  During 
the  long  summer,  foaming  pails  of  milk  and 
bowls  of  golden  butter  have  testified  to  the 
Kentucky  housewife  with  what  delight  the 
cows  have  ruminated  on  the  stores  gathered 
each  plentiful  day.  The  Kentucky  farmer 
knows  that  the  distant  metropolitan  beef-eater 
will  in  time  have  good  reason  to  thank  it  for 
yonder  winding  herd  of  sleek  young  steers 
that  are  softly  brushing  their  rounded  sides 
with  their  long,  white,  silky  tails,  while  they 
plunge  their  puffing  noses  into  its  depths  and 
tear  away  huge  mouthfuls  of  its  inexhaustible 
richness.  Thorough  -  bred  sire  and  dam  and 
7 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

foal  in  paddocks  or  deeper  pastures  have  drawn 
from  it  form  and  quality  and  organization  : 
hardness  and  solidity  of  bone,  strength  of  ten- 
don, firmness  and  elasticity  of  muscle,  power 
of  nerve,  and  capacity  of  lung.  Even  the  Fal- 
staff  porkers,  their  eyes  gleaming  with  glut- 
tonous enjoyment,  have  looked  to  it  for  the 
shaping  of  their  posthumous  hams  and  the 
padding  of  their  long  backbones  in  depths  of 
snowy  lard.  In  winter  mules  and  sheep  and 
horses  paw  away  the  snow  to  get  at  the  green 
shoots  that  lie  covered  over  beneath  the  full, 
rank  growth  of  autumn,  or  they  find  it  attrac- 
tive provender  in  their  ricks.  For  all  that  live 
upon  it,  it  is  pereiinial  and  abundant,  beautiful 
and  beneficent — the  first  great  natural  factor 
in  the  prosperity  of  the  Kentucky  people. 
What  wonder  if  the  Kentuckian,  like  the 
Greek  of  old,  should  wish  to  have  even  his 
paradise  well  set  in  grass ;  or  that,  with  a 
knowing  humor,  he  should  smile  -at  David  for 
saying,  "  He  maketh  his  grass  to  grow  upon 
the  mountains,"  inasmuch  as  the  only  grass 
worth  speaking  of  grows  on  his  beloved  plain ! 


II 


BUT  if  grass  is  the  first  element  in  the 
lovely  Kentucky  landscape,  as  it  must 
be  in  every  other  one,  by  no  means 
should  it  be  thought  sole  or  chief.  In  Dante, 
as  Ruskin  points  out,  whenever  the  country  is 
to  be  beautiful,  we  come  into  open  air  and 
open  meadows.  Homer  places  the  sirens  in  a 
meadow  when  they  are  to  sing.  Over  the 
blue-grass,  therefore,  one  walks  into  the  open 
air  and  open  meadows  of  the  blue-grass  land. 

This  has  long  had  reputation  for  being  one 
of  the  very  beautiful  spots  of  the  earth,  and  it 
is  worth  while  to  consider  those  elements  of 
natural  scenery  wherein  the  beauty  consists. 

One  might  say,  first,  that  the  landscape  pos- 
sesses what  is  so  very  rare  even  in  beautiful 
landscapes — the  quality  of  gracefulness.  No- 
where does  one  encounter  vertical  lines  or 
violent  slopes  ;  nor  are  there  perfectly  level 
stretches  like  those  that  make  the  green  fields 
monotonous  in  the  Dutch  lowlands.  The  dark, 
9 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

fineiy  sifted  soil  lies  deep  over  the  limestone 
hills,  filling  out  their  chasms  to  evenness,  and 
rounding  their  jagged  or  precipitous  edges, 
very  much  as  a  heavy  snow  at  night  will  leave 
the  morning  landscape  with  mitigated  rugged- 
ness  and  softer  curves.  The  long,  slow  action 
of  water  has  further  moulded  everything  into 
symmetry,  so  that  the  low  ancient  hills  de- 
scend to  the  valleys  in  exquisite  folds  and  un- 
interrupted slopes.  The  whole  great  plain  un- 
dulates away  league  after  league  towards  the 
distant  horizon  in  an  endless  succession  of  gen- 
tle convex  surfaces — like  the  easy  swing  of  the 
sea — presenting  a  panorama  of  subdued  swells 
and  retiring  surges.  Everything  in  the  blue- 
grass  country  is  billowy  and  afloat.  The  spirit 
of  nature  is  intermediate  between  violent  en- 
ergy and  complete  repose  ;  and  the  effect  of 
this  mild  activity  is  kept  from  monotony  by 
the  accidental  perspective  of  position,  creat- 
ing variety  of  details. 

One  traces  this  quality  of  gracefulness  in  the 
labyrinthine  courses  of  the  restful  streams,  in 
the  disposition  of  forest  masses,  in  the  free,  un- 
studied succession  of  meadow,  field,  and  lawn. 
Surely  it  is  just  this  order  of  low  hill  scenery, 
just  these  buoyant  undulations,  that  should  be 
covered  with  the  blue-grass.  Had  Hawthorne 
ever  looked  on  this  landscape  when  most  beau- 

lO 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

tif  ul,  he  could  never  have  said  of  England  that 
"no  other  country  will  ever  have  this  charm 
of  lovely  verdure." 

Characteristically  beautiful  spots  on  the 
blue  -  grass  landscape  are  the  woodland  past- 
ures. A  Kentucky  wheat  -  field,  a  Kentucky 
meadow,  a  Kentucky  lawn,  is  but  a  field,  a 
meadow,  a  lawn,  found  elsewhere  ;  but  a  Ken- 
tucky sylvan  slope  has  a  loveliness  unique 
and  local.  Rightly  do  poets  make  pre-eminent- 
ly beautiful  countries  abound  in  trees.  John 
Burroughs,  writing  with  enthusiasm  of  Eng- 
lish woods,  has  said  that  "  in  midsummer  the 
hair  of  our  trees  seems  to  stand  on  end  ;  the 
woods  have  a  frightened  look,  or  as  if  they 
were  just  recovering  from  a  debauch."  This 
is  not  true  of  the  Kentucky  woods,  unless  it  be 
in  some  season  of  protracted  drought.  The 
foliage  of  the  Kentucky  trees  is  not  thin  nor 
dishevelled,  the  leaves  crowd  thick  to  the  very 
ends  of  the  boughs,  and  spread  themselves 
full  to  the  sky,  making,  where  they  are  close 
together,  under-spaces  of  green  gloom  scarcely 
shot  through  by  sunbeams.  Indeed,  one  often 
finds  here  the  perfection  of  tree  forms.  I 
mean  that  rare  development  which  brings  the 
extremities  of  the  boughs  to  the  very  limit  of 
the  curve  that  nature  intends  the  tree  to  de- 
fine as  the  peculiar  shape  of  its  species.  Any 
II 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

but  the  most  favorable  conditions  leave  the 
outline  jagged,  faulty,  and  untrue.  Here  and 
there  over  the  blue-grass  landscape  one's  eye 
rests  on  a  cone-shaped,  or  dome-shaped,  or  in- 
verted pear-shaped,  or  fan-shaped  tree.  Nor 
are  fulness  of  leafage  and  perfection  of  form 
alone  to  be  noted  ;  pendency  of  boughs  is  an- 
other distinguishing  feature.  One  who  loves 
and  closely  studies  trees  will  note  here  the  com- 
parative absence  of  woody  stiffness.  It  is  ex- 
pected that  the  willow  and  the  elm  should 
droop  their  branches.  Here  the  same  char- 
acteristic strikes  you  in  the  wild  cherry,  the 
maple,  and  the  sycamore — even  in  great  wal- 
nuts and  ashes  and  oaks  ;  and  I  have  occasion- 
ally discovered  exceeding  grace  of  form  in 
hackberries  (which  usually  look  paralytic  and 
as  if  waiting  to  hobble  away  on  crutches),  in 
locusts,  and  in  the  harsh  hickories — loved  by 
Thoreau. 

But  to  return  to  the  woodland  pastures. 
They  are  the  last  vestiges  of  that  unbroken 
primeval  forest  which,  together  with  cane- 
brakes  and  pea-vines,  covered  the  face  of  the 
country  when  it  was  first  beheld  by  the  pioneers. 
No  blue-grass  then.  In  these  woods  the  timber 
has  been  so  cut  out  that  the  remaining  trees 
often  stand  clearly  revealed  in  their  entire  form, 
their   far-reaching  boughs   perhaps   not  even 

12 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

touching  those  of  their  nearest  neighbor,  or  in- 
terlacing them  with  ineffectual  fondness.  There 
is  something  pathetic  in  the  sight,  and  in  the 
thought  of  those  innumerable  stricken  ones  that 
in  years  agone  were  dismembered  for  cord-wood 
and  kitchen  stoves  and  the  vast  fireplaces  of 
old-time  negro  cabins.  In  the  well-kept  blue- 
glass  pasture  undergrowth  and  weeds  are  an- 
nually cut  down,  so  that  the  massive  trunks 
are  revealed  from  a  distance ;  the  better  be- 
cause the  branches  seldom  are  lower  than  ten 
to  twenty  feet  above  the  earth.  Thus  in  its 
daily  course  the  sun  strikes  every  point  beneath 
the  broad  branches,  and  nourishes  the  blue- 
grass  up  to  the  very  roots.  All  savagery,  all 
wildness,  is  taken  out  of  these  pastures  ;  they 
are  full  of  tenderness  and  repose — of  the  ut- 
most delicacy  and  elegance.  Over  the  grace- 
ful earth  spreads  the  flowing  green  grass,  uni- 
form and  universal.  Above  this  stand  the  full, 
swelling  trunks — warm  browns  and  pale  grays 
— often  lichen-flecked  or  moss-enamelled.  Over 
these  expand  the  vast  domes  and  canopies  of 
leafage.  And  falling  down  upon  these  comes 
the  placid  sunshine  through  a  sky  of  cerulean 
blueness,  and  past  the  snowy  zones  of  gleaming 
cloud.  The  very  individuality  of  the  tree  comes 
out  as  it  never  can  in  denser  places.  Always 
the  most  truly  human  object  in  still,  voiceless 
13 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

nature,  it  here  throws  out  its  arms  to  you  with 
imploring  tenderness,  with  what  Wadsworth 
called  "the  soft  eye -music  of  slow -waving 
boughs."  One  cannot  travel  far  in  the  blue- 
grass  country  without  coming  upon  one  of  these 
woodland  strips. 

Of  the  artistic  service  rendered  the  landscape 
of  this  region  by  other  elements  of  scenery — 
atmosphere  and  cloud  and  sky— much  might, 
but  little  will,  be  said.  The  atmosphere  is 
sometimes  crystalline,  sometimes  full  of  that 
intense  repose  of  dazzling  light  which  one,  with- 
out ever  having  seen  them,  knows  to  be  on  can- 
vases of  Turner.  Then,  again,  it  is  amber-hued, 
or  tinged  with  soft  blue,  graduated  to  purple 
shadows  on  the  horizon.  During  the  greater 
part  of  the  year  the  cloud-sky  is  one  of  strongly 
outlined  forms ;  the  great  white  cumuli  drift 
over,  with  every  majesty  of  design  and  grace 
of  grouping  ;  but  there  come,  in  milder  seasons, 
many  days  when  one  may  see  three  cloud  belts 
in  the  heavens  at  the  same  time,  the  lowest  far, 
far  away,  and  the  highest  brushing  softly,  as  it 
were,  past  the  very  dome  of  the  inviolable  blue. 
You  turn  your  eye  downward  to  see  the  light 
wandering  wistfully  among  the  low  distant 
hills,  and  the  sweet  tremulous  shadows  cross- 
ing the  meadows  with  timid  cadences.  It  is  a. 
beautiful  country ;  the  Kentucky  skies  are  not 
14 


••■•••      • 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

the  cold,  hard,  brilliant,  hideous  things  that  so 
many  writers  on  nature  style  American  skies 
(usually  meaning  New  England  skies),  as  con- 
trasted with  skies  European.  They  are  at  times 
ineffably  warm  in  tone  and  tender  in  hue,  giv- 
ing aerial  distances  magical  and  fathomless 
above,  and  throwing  down  upon  the  varied  soft 
harmonious  greens  of  the  landscape  below,  upon 
its  rich  browns  and  weathered  grays  and  whole 
scheme  of  terrene  colors,  a  flood  of  radiance  as 
bountiful  and  transfiguring  as  it  is  chastened 
and  benign. 

But  why  make  a  description  of  the  blue-grass 
region  of  Kentucky  ?  What  one  sees  may  be 
only  what  one  feels — only  intricate  affinities 
between  nature  and  self  that  were  developed 
long  ago,  and  have  become  too  deep  to  be  view- 
ed as  relations  or  illusions.  What  two  human 
beings  find  the  same  things  in  the  face  of  a 
third,  or  in  nature's  ?  Descriptions  of  scenery 
are  notoriously  disappointing  to  those  whose 
taste  in  landscape  is  different,  or  who  have  lit- 
tle or  no  sentiment  for  pure  landscape  beauty. 
So  one  coming  hither  might  be  sorely  disap- 
pointed. No  mountains ;  no  strips  of  distant 
blue  gleaming  water  nor  lawny  cascades  ;  no 
grandeur ;  no  majesty  ;  no  wild  picturesque- 
ness.  The  chords  of  landscape  harmony  are 
very  simple ;  nothing  but  softness  and  amenity, 
15 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

grace  and  repose,  delicacy  and  elegance.  One 
might  fail  at  seasons  to  find  even  these.  This 
is  a  beautiful  country,  but  not  always  ;  there 
come  days  when  the  climate  shows  as  ugly  a 
temper  as  possible.  Not  a  little  of  the  finest 
timber  has  been  lost  by  storms.  The  sky  is  for 
days  one  great  blanket  of  grewsome  gray.  In 
winter  you  laugh  with  chattering  teeth  at  those 
who  call  this  "  the  South,"  the  thermometer 
perhaps  registering  from  twelve  to  fifteen  de- 
grees below  zero.  In  summer  the  name  is  but 
a  half-truth.  Only  by  visiting  this  region  dur- 
ing some  lovely  season,  or  by  dwelling  here 
from  year  to  year,  and  seeing  it  in  all  the  humors 
of  storm  and  sunshine,  can  one  love  it. 


Ill 


BUT  the  ideal  landscape  of  daily  life  must 
not  be  merely  beautiful  :  it  should  be 
useful.  With  what  may  not  the  fertility 
of  this  region  be  compared?  With  the  valleys 
of  the  Schuylkill,  the  Shenandoah,  and  the 
Genesee  ;  with  the  richest  lands  of  Lombardy 
and  Belgium  ;  with  the  most  fertile  districts 
of  England.  The  evidences  of  this  fertility 
are  everywhere.  Nature,  even  in  those  places 
where  she  has  been  forced  for  nearly  a  hun- 
dred years  to  bear  much  at  the  hands  of  a  not 
alwaysjudicious  agriculture,  unceasingly  strug- 
gles to  cover  herself  with  bushes  of  all  sorts 
and  nameless  annual  weeds  and  grasses.  Even 
the  blue-grass  contends  in  vain  for  complete 
possession  of  its  freehold.  One  is  forced  to 
note,  even  though  without  sentiment,  the  rich 
pageant  of  transitory  wild  bloom  that  will 
force  a  passage  for  itself  over  the  landscape  : 
firmaments  of  golden  dandelions  in  the  lawns  ; 
vast  beds  of  violets,  gray  and  blue,  in  dim 
B  17 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

glades ;  patches  of  flaunting  sunflowers  along 
the  road-sides  ;  purple  thistles  ;  and,  of  deeper 
purple  still  and  far  denser  growth,  beautiful 
ironweed  in  the  woods ;  with  many  clumps 
of  alder  bloom,  and  fast-extending  patches  of 
perennial  blackberry,  and  groups  of  delicate 
May-apples,  and  whole  fields  of  dog -fennel 
and  goldenrod.  And  why  mention  indomitable 
dock  and  gigantic  poke,  burrs  and  plenteous 
nightshade,  and  mullein  and  plantain,  with 
dusty  gray -green  ragweed  and  thrifty  fox- 
tail?— an  innumerable  company. 

Maize,  pumpkins,  and  beans  grow  together 
in  a  field — a  triple  crop.  Nature  perfects  them 
all,  yet  must  do  more.  Scarce  have  the  ploughs 
left  the  furrows  before  there  springs  up  a  varied 
wild  growth,  and  a  fourth  crop,  morning-glo- 
ries, festoon  the  tall  tassels  of  the  Indian-corn 
ere  the  knife  can  be  laid  against  the  stalk. 
Harvest  fields  usually  have  their  stubble  well 
hidden  by  a  rich,  deep  aftermath.  Garden 
patches,  for  all  that  hoe  and  rake  can  do,  com- 
monly look  at  last  like  spots  given  over  to 
weeds  and  grasses.  Sidewalks  quickly  lose  their 
borders.  Pavements  would  soon  disappear  from 
sight ;  the  winding  of  a  distant  stream  through 
the  fields  can  be  readily  followed  by  the  line 
of  vegetation  that  rushes  there  to  fight  for 
life,  from  the  minutest  creeping  vines  to  forest 
i8 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

trees.  Every  neglected  fence  corner  becomes 
an  area  for  a  fresh  colony.  Leave  one  of  these 
sweet,  humanized  woodland  pastures  alone  for 
a  shore  period  of  years,  it  runs  wild  with  a 
dense  young  natural  forest ;  vines  shoot  up  to 
the  tops  of  the  tallest  trees,  and  then  tumble 
over  in  green  sprays  on  the  heads  of  others. 

A  kind,  true,  patient,  self-helpful  soil  if  ever 
there  was  one  !  Some  of  these  lands  after  be- 
ing cultivated,  not  always  scientifically,  but 
always  without  artificial  fertilizers,  for  more 
than  three-quarters  of  a  century,  are  now,  if 
properly  treated,  equal  in  productiveness  to 
the  best  farming  lands  of  England.  The 
farmer  from  one  of  these  old  fields  will  take 
two  different  crops  in  a  season.  He  gets  two 
cuttings  of  clover  from  a  meadow,  and  has  rich 
grazing  left.  A  few  counties  have  at  a  time 
produced  three  -  fourths  of  the  entire  hemp 
product  of  the  United  States.  The  State  itself 
has  at  different  times  stood  first  in  wheat  and 
hemp  and  Indian-corn  and  wool  and  tobacco 
and  flax,  although  half  its  territory  is  covered 
with  virgin  forests.  When  lands  under  im- 
proper treatment  have  become  impoverished, 
their  productiveness  has  been  restored,  not  by 
artificial  fertilizers,  but  by  simple  rotation  of 
crops,  with  nature's  help.  The  soil  rests  on 
decomposable  limestone,  which  annually  gives 
19 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

up  to  it  in  solution  all  the  essential  mineral 
plant  food  that  judicious  agriculture  needs. 

Soil  and  air  and  climate — the  entire  aggre- 
gate of  influences  happily  co-operative — make 
the  finest  grazing.  The  Kentucky  horse  has 
carried  the  reputation  of  the  country  into 
regions  where  even  the  people  could  never 
have  made  it  known.  Your  expert  in  the 
breeding  of  thoroughbreds  will  tell  you  that 
the  muscular  fibre  of  the  blue-grass  animal  is 
to  that  of  the  Pennsylvania-bred  horses  as  silk 
to  cotton,  and  the  texture  of  his  bone,  com- 
pared with  the  latter's,  as  ivory  beside  pumice- 
stone.  If  taken  to  the  Eastern  States,  in 
twelve  generations  he  is  no  longer  the  same 
breed  of  horse.  His  blood  fertilizes  American 
stock  the  continent  over.  Jersey  cattle  brought 
here  increase  in  size.  Sires  come  to  Kentucky 
to  make  themselves  and  their  offspring  fa- 
mous. 

The  people  themselves  are  a  fecund  race. 
Out  of  this  State  have  gone  more  to  enrich 
the  citizenship  of  the  nation  than  all  the  other 
States  together  have  been  able  to  send  into  it. 
So  at  least  your  loyal-hearted  Kentuckian  looks 
at  the  rather  delicate  subject  of  inter  -  State 
migration.  By  actual  measurement  the  Ken- 
tucky volunteers  during  the  Civil  War  were 
found  to  surpass  all  others  (except  Tennessee- 
20 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

ans)  in  height  and  weight,  whether  coming 
from  the  United  States  or  various  countries 
of  Europe.  But  for  the  great-headed  Scandi- 
navians, they  would  have  been  first,  also,  in 
circumference  around  the  forehead  and  occi- 
put. Still,  Kentucky  has  little  or  no  litera- 
ture. 

One  element  that  should  be  conspicuous  in 
fertile  countries  does  not  strike  the  observer 
here — much  beautiful  water;  no  other  State 
has  a  frontage  of  navigable  rivers  equal  to  that 
of  Kentucky.  But  there  are  few  limpid,  lovely, 
smaller  streams.  Wonderful  springs  there  are, 
and  vast  stores  of  water  in  the  cavernous  earth 
below ;  but  the  landscape  lacks  the  charm  of 
this  element — clear,  rushing,  musical,  abundant. 
The  watercourses,  ever  winding  and  graceful, 
are  apt  to  be  either  swollen  and  turbid  or  in- 
significant ;  of  late  years  the  beds  seem  less 
full  also — a  change  consequent,  perhaps,  upon 
the  denudation  of  forest  lands.  In  a  dry  sea- 
son the  historic  Elkhorn  seems  little  more  than 
a  ganglion  of  precarious  pools. 


IV 


THE  best  artists  who  have  painted  culti- 
vated ground  have  always  been  very- 
careful  to  limit  the  area  of  the  crops. 
Undoubtedly  the  substitution  of  a  more  scien- 
tific agriculture  for  the  loose  and  easy  ways  of 
primitive  husbandry  has  changed  the  key-note 
of  rural  existence  from  a  tender  Virgilian  sen- 
timent to  a  coarser  strain,  and  as  life  becomes 
more  unsophisticated  it  grows  less  picturesque. 
When  the  work  of  the  old-time  reaper  is  done 
by  a  fat  man  with  a  flaming  face,  sitting  on  a 
cast-iron  machine,  and  smoking  a  cob  pipe,  the 
artist  will  leave  the  fields.  Figures  have  a  ter- 
rible power  to  destroy  sentiment  in  pure  land- 
scape ;  so  have  houses.  When  one  leaves  nature, 
pure  and  simple,  in  the  blue-grass  country,  he 
must  accordingly  pick  his  way  circumspectly 
or  go  amiss  in  his  search  for  the  beautiful.  If 
his  taste  lead  him  to  desire  in  landscapes  the 
finest  evidences  of  human  labor,  the  high  arti- 
ficial finish  of  a  minutely  careful  civilization, 

22 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

he  will  here  find  great  disappointment.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  he  delight  in  those  exquisite  rural 
spots  of  the  Old  World  with  picturesque  bits  of 
homestead  architecture  and  the  perfection  of 
horticultural  and  unobtrusive  botanical  details, 
he  will  be  no  less  aggrieved.  What  he  sees 
here  is  neither  the  most  scientific  farming, 
simply  economic  and  utilitarian — raw  and  rude 
— nor  that  cultivated  desire  for  the  elements  in 
nature  to  be  so  moulded  by  the  hand  of  man 
that  they  will  fuse  harmoniously  and  inextri- 
cably with  his  habitations  and  his  work. 

The  whole  face  of  the  country  is  taken  up  by 
a  succession  of  farms.  Each  of  these,  except 
the  very  small  ones,  presents  to  the  eye  the 
variation  of  meadow,  field,  and  woodland  past- 
ure, together  with  the  homestead  and  the  sur- 
rounding grounds  of  orchard,  garden,  and  lawn. 
The  entire  landscape  is  thus  caught  in  a  vast 
net-work  of  fences.  The  Kentuckian  retains 
his  English  ancestors'  love  of  enclosures  ;  but 
the  uncertain  tenure  of  estates  beyond  a  single 
generation  does  not  encourage  him  to  make 
them  the  most  durable.  One  does,  indeed, 
notice  here  and  there  throughout  the  country 
stone-walls  of  blue  limestone,  that  give  an  as- 
pect of  substantial  repose  and  comfortable  firm- 
ness to  the  scenery.  But  the  farmer  dreads 
their  costliness,  even  though  his  own  hill-sides 
23 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

furnish  him  an  abundant  quarry.  He  knows 
that  unless  the  foundations  are  laid  like  those 
of  a  house,  the  thawing  earth  will  unsettle  them, 
that  water,  freezing  as  it  trickles  through  the 
crevices,  will  force  the  stones  out  of  their  places, 
and  that  breaches  will  be  made  in  them  by  boys 
on  a  hunt  whenever  and  wherever  it  shall  be 
necessary  to  get  at  a  lurking  or  sorely  pressed 
hare.  It  is  ludicrously  true  that  the  most  ter- 
rible destroyer  of  stone-walls  in  this  country  is 
the  small  boy  hunting  a  hare,  with  an  appe- 
tite for  game  that  knows  no  geological  impedi- 
ment. Therefore  one  hears  of  fewer  limestone 
fences  of  late  years,  some  being  torn  down  and 
superseded  by  plank  fences  or  post-and-rail 
fences,  or  by  the  newer  barbed-wire  fence — an 
economic  device  that  will  probably  become  as 
popular  in  regions  where  stone  and  timber  were 
never  to  be  had  as  in  others,  like  this,  where 
timber  has  been  ignorantly,  wantonly  sacrificed. 
It  is  a  pleasure  to  know  that  one  of  the  most 
expensive,  and  certainly  the  most  hideous, 
fences  ever  in  vogue  here  is  falling  into  disuse. 
I  mean  the  worm-fence — called  worm  because 
it  wriggled  over  the  landscape  like  a  long  brown 
caterpillar,  the  stakes  being  the  bristles  along 
its  back,  and  because  it  now  and  then  ate  up  a 
noble  walnut-tree  close  by,  or  a  kingly  oak,  or 
frightened,  trembling  ash — a  worm  that  decided 
24 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

the  destiny  of  forests.  A  pleasure  it  is,  too,  to 
come  occasionally  upon  an  Osage  orange  hedge- 
row, which  is  a  green  eternal  fence.  But  you 
will  not  find  many  of  these.  It  is  generally  too 
much  to  ask  of  an  American,  even  though  he 
be  a  Kentuckian,  to  wait  for  a  hedge  to  grow 
and  make  him  a  fence.  When  he  takes  a  notion 
to  have  a  fence,  he  wants  it  put  up  before  Sat- 
urday night. 

If  the  Kentuckian,  like  the  Englishman,  is 
fond  of  fencing  himself  off,  like  the  Frenchman, 
he  loves  long,  straight  roads.  You  will  not 
find  elsewhere  in  America  such  highways  as 
the  Kentuckian  has  constructed  over  his  coun- 
try—  broad,  smooth,  level,  white,  glistening 
turnpikes  of  macadamized  limestone.  It  is  a 
luxury  to  drive,  and  also  an  expense,  as  one 
will  discover  before  one  has  passed  through 
many  toll  -  gates.  One  could  travel  more 
cheaply  on  the  finest  railway  on  the  con- 
tinent. What  Richard  Grant  White  thought 
it  worth  while  to  record  as  a  rare  and  interest- 
ing sight — a  man  on  an  English  highway  break- 
ing stones — is  no  uncommon  sight  here.  All 
limestone  for  these  hundreds  of  miles  of  road, 
having  been  quarried  here,  there,  anywhere, 
and  carted  and  strewn  along  the  road-side,  is 
broken  by  a  hammer  in  the  hand.  By  the 
highway  the  workman  sits — usually  an  Irish- 
25 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

man — pecking  away  at  a  long  rugged  pile  as 
though  he  were  good  to  live  for  a  thousand 
years.  Somehow,  in  patience,  he  always  gets 
to  the  other  end  of  his  hard  row. 

One  cannot  sojourn  long  without  coming  to 
conceive  an  interest  in  this  limestone,  and  lov- 
ing to  meet  its  rich  warm  hues  on  the  land- 
scape. It  has  made  a  deal  of  history  :  lime- 
stone blue  -  grass,  limestone  water,  limestone 
roads,  limestone  fences,  limestone  bridges  and 
arches,  limestone  engineering  architecture, 
limestone  water-mills,  limestone  spring-houses 
and  homesteads  —  limestone  Kentuckians  ! 
Outside  of  Scripture  no  people  was  ever  so 
founded  on  a  rock.  It  might  be  well  to  note, 
likewise,  that  the  soil  of  this  region  is  what 
scientists  call  sedentary — called  so  because  it 
sits  quietly  on  the  rocks,  not  because  the  peo- 
ple sit  quietly  on  it. 

Undoubtedly  the  most  picturesque  monu- 
ments in  the  blue-grass  country  are  old  stone 
water-mills  and  old  stone  homesteads  —  land- 
marks each  for  separate  trains  of  ideas  that 
run  to  poetry  and  to  history.  The  latter,  built 
by  pioneers  or  descendants  of  pioneers,  nearly 
a  hundred  years  ago,  stand  gray  with  years, 
but  good  for  nameless  years  to  come  ;  great 
low  chimneys,  deep  little  windows,  thick  walls, 
mighty  fireplaces  ;  situated  usually  with  keen 
26 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

discretion  on  an  elevation  near  a  spring,  just 
as  a  Saxon  forefather  would  have  placed  them 
centuries  ago.  Haply  one  will  see  the  water 
of  this  spring  issuing  still  from  a  recess  in  a 
hill-side,  with  an  overhanging  ledge  of  rock — 
the  entrance  to  this  cavern  being  walled  across 
and  closed  with  a  gate,  thus  making,  according 
to  ancient  fashion,  a  simple  natural  spring- 
house  and  dairy. 

Something  like  a  feeling  of  exasperation  is 
apt  to  come  over  one  in  turning  to  the  typical 
modern  houses.  Nowhere,  certainly,  in  rural 
America,  are  there,  within  the  same  area,  more 
substantial,  comfortable  homesteads.  They 
are  nothing  if  not  spacious  and  healthful, 
frame  or  brick,  two  stories,  shingle  roofs. 
But  they  lack  characteristic  physiognomy ; 
they  have  no  harmony  with  the  landscape, 
nor  with  each  other,  nor  often  with  them- 
selves. They  are  not  beautiful  when  new, 
and  can  never  be  beautiful  when  old  ;  for  the 
beauty  of  newness  and  the  beauty  of  oldness 
alike  depend  on  beauty  of  form  and  color, 
which  here  is  lacking.  One  longs  for  the  sight 
of  a  rural  Gothic  cottage,  which  would  har- 
monize so  well  with  the  order  of  the  scenery, 
or  for  a  light,  elegant  villa  that  should  over- 
look these  light  and  elegant  undulations  of  a 
beautiful  and  varied  landscape.  It  must  be 
27 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

understood  that  there  are  notable  exceptions 
to  these  statements  even  in  the  outlying  dis- 
tricts of  the  blue-grass  country,  and  that  they 
do  not  apply  to  the  environs  of  the  towns,  nor 
to  the  towns  themselves. 

Nowhere  does  one  see  masses  of  merely 
beautiful  things  in  the  country.  The  slum- 
bering art  of  interior  decoration  is  usually 
spent  upon  the  parlor.  The  grounds  around 
the  houses  are  not  kept  in  the  best  order. 
The  typical  rural  Kentucky  housewife  does 
not  seem  to  have  any  compelling,  controlling 
sense  of  the  beautiful.  She  invariably  con- 
cedes something  to  beauty,  but  not  enough. 
You  will  find  a  show  of  flowers  at  the  poorest 
houses,  though  but  geranium  slips  in  miscel- 
laneous tins  and  pottery.  But  you  do  not  gen- 
erally see  around  more  prosperous  homes  any 
such  parterres  or  beds  as  there  is  money  to 
spend  on,  and  time  to  tend,  and  grounds  to 
justify. 

A  like  spirit  is  shown  by  the  ordinary  blue- 
grass  farmer.  His  management  strikes  you 
as  not  the  pink  of  tidiness,  not  the  model  of 
systematic  thrift.  Exceptions  exist — many  ex- 
ceptions— but  the  rule  holds  good.  One  can- 
not travel  here  in  summer  or  autumn  without 
observing  that  weeds  flourish  where  they  harm 
and  create  ugliness ;  fences  go  unrepaired ; 
28 


The  Blue- Grass  Region 

gates  may  be  found  swinging  on  one  hinge. 
He  misuses  his  long-cultivated  fields ;  he  cuts 
down  his  scant,  precious  trees.  His  energy  is 
not  tireless,  his  watchfulness  not  sleepless. 
Why  should  they  be  ?  Human  life  here  is  not 
massed  and  swarming.  The  occupation  of  the 
soil  is  not  close  and  niggard.  The  landscape 
is  not  even  compact,  much  less  crowded. 
There  is  room  for  more,  plenty  for  more  to 
eat.  No  man  here,  like  the  ancient  Roman 
praetor,  ever  decided  how  often  one  might, 
without  trespass,  gather  the  acorns  that  fall 
from  his  neighbors'  trees.  No  woman  ever 
went  through  a  blue-grass  harvest-field  glean- 
ing. Ruth's  vocation  is  unknown.  By  nature 
the  Kentuckian  is  no  rigid  economist.  By 
birth,  education,  tradition,  and  inherited  ten- 
dencies he  is  not  a  country  clout,  but  a  rural 
gentleman.  His  ideal  of  life  is  neither  vast 
wealth  nor  personal  distinction,  but  solid  com- 
fort in  material  conditions,  and  the  material 
conditions  are  easy  :  fertility  of  soil,  annual 
excess  of  production  over  consumption,  com- 
parative thinness  of  population.  So  he  does 
not  brace  himself  for  the  tense  struggle  of  life 
as  it  goes  on  in  centres  of  fierce  territorial 
shoulder- pushing.  He  can  afford  to  indulge 
his  slackness  of  endeavor.  He  is  neither  an 
alert  aggressive  agriculturist,  nor  a  landscape- 
29 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

gardener,  nor  a  purveyor  of  commodities  to 
the  green-grocer.  If  the  world  wants  vegeta- 
bles, let  it  raise  them.  He  declines  to  work 
himself  to  death  for  other  people,  though  they 
pay  him  for  it.  He  wife  is  a  lady,  not  a  do- 
mestic laborer ;  and  it  is  her  privilege,  in 
household  affairs,  placidly  to  surround  herself 
with  an  abundance  which  the  life-long  female 
economists  of  the  North  would  regard  with 
conscientious  indignation. 

In  truth,  there  is  much  evidence  to  show  that 
this  park  -  like  country,  intersected  by  many 
beautiful  railroads,  turnpikes,  and  shaded  pict- 
uresque lanes,  will  become  less  and  less  an  ag- 
ricultural district,  more  and  more  a  region 
of  unequalled  pasturage,  and  hence  more  park- 
like still.  One  great  interest  abides  here,  of 
course — the  manufacture  of  Bourbon  whiskey. 
Another  interest  has  only  within  the  last  few 
years  been  developed — the  cultivation  of  to- 
bacco, for  which  it  was  formerly  thought  that 
the  blue-grass  soils  were  not  adapted.  But  as 
years  go  by,  the  stock  interests  invite  more 
capital,  demand  more  attention,  give  more 
pleasure — in  a  word,  strike  the  full  chord  of 
modern  interest  by  furnishing  an  unparalleled 
jneans  of  speculative  profit. 

Forty  years  ago  the  most  distinguished  citi- 
zens of  the  State  were  engaged  in  writing  es- 
30 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

says  and  prize  papers  on  scientific  agriculture. 
A  regular  trotting  track  was  not  to  be  found 
in  the  whole  country.  Nothing  was  thought  of 
the  breeding  and  training  of  horses  with  refer- 
ence to  development  of  greater  speed.  Pacing 
horses  were  fashionable  ;  and  two  great  rivals 
in  this  gait  having  been  brought  together  for  a 
trial  of  speed,  in  lieu  of  a  track,  paced  a  mighty 
race  over  a  river-bottom  flat.  We  have  changed 
all  that.  The  gentlemen  no  longer  write  their 
essays.  Beef  won  the  spurs  of  knighthood.  In 
Kentucky  the  horse  has  already  been  styled  the 
first  citizen.  The  great  agricultural  fairs  of  the 
State  have  modified  their  exhibits  with  refer- 
ence to  him  alone,  and  fifteen  or  twenty  thou- 
sand people  give  afternoon  after  afternoon  to 
the  contemplation  of  his  beauty  and  his  speed. 
His  one  rival  is  the  thoroughbred,  who  goes  on 
running  faster  and  faster.  One  of  the  brief 
code  of  nine  laws  for  the  government  of  the 
young  Kentucky  commonwealth  that  were 
passed  in  the  first  legislative  assembly  ever 
held  west  of  the  Alleghanies  dealt  with  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  breed  of  horses.  Nothing  was 
said  of  education.  The  Kentuckian  loves  the 
memory  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  not  forgetting 
that  he  once  ran  race-horses.  These  great  in- 
terests, not  overlooking  the  cattle  interest,  the 
manufacture  of  whiskey,  and  the  raising  of  to- 
31 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

bacco,  will  no  doubt  constitute  the  future  deter- 
mining factors  in  the  history  of  this  country. 
It  should  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  the 
Northern  and  Eastern  palate  becomes  kindly 
disposed  at  the  bare  mention  of  the  many  thou- 
sands of  turkeys  that  annually  fatten  on  these 
plains. 


"  ¥  N  Kentucky,"  writes  Professor  Shaler,  in 
I  his  recent  history,  "  we  shall  find  nearly 
*  pure  English  blood.  It  is,  moreover,  the 
largest  body  of  pure  English  folk  that  has, 
speaking  generally,  been  separated  from  the 
mother-country  for  two  hundred  years."  They, 
the  blue-grass  Kentuckians,  are  the  descend- 
ants of  those  hardy,  high-spirited,  picked  Eng- 
lishmen, largely  of  the  squire  and  yeoman  class, 
whose  absorbing  passion  was  not  religious  dis- 
putation, nor  the  intellectual  purpose  of  found- 
ing a  State,  but  the  ownership  of  land  and 
the  pursuits  and  pleasures  of  rural  life,  close  to 
the  rich  soil,  and  full  of  its  strength  and  sun- 
light. They  have  to  this  day,  in  a  degree  per- 
haps equalled  by  no  others  living,  the  race  qual- 
ities of  their  English  ancestry  and  the  tastes  and 
habitudes  of  their  forefathers.  If  one  knows 
the  Saxon  nature,  and  has  been  a  close  student 
of  Kentucky  life  and  character,  stripped  bare 
of  the  accidental  circumstances  of  local  environ- 
c  33 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

ment,  he  may  amuse  himself  with  laying  the  two 
side  by  side  and  comparing  the  points  of  essen- 
tial likeness.  It  is  a  question  whether  the  Ken- 
tuckian  is  not  more  like  his  English  ancestor 
than  his  New  England  contemporary.  This  is 
an  old  country,  as  things  go  in  the  West.  The 
rock  formation  is  very  old ;  the  soil  is  old  ;  the 
race  qualities  here  are  old.  In  the  Sagas,  in 
the  Edda,  a  man  must  be  overbrave.  "  Let  all 
who  are  not  cowards  follow  me !"  cried  McGary, 
putting  an  end  to  prudent  counsel  on  the  eve 
of  the  battle  of  the  Blue  Licks.  The  Kentuckian 
winced  under  the  implication  then,  and  has 
done  it  in  a  thousand  instances  since.  Over- 
bravery  !  The  idea  runs  through  the  pages  of 
Kentucky  history,  drawing  them  back  into  the 
centuries  of  his  race.  It  is  this  quality  of  tem- 
per and  conception  of  manhood  that  has  oper- 
ated to  build  up  in  the  mind  of  the  world  the 
figure  of  the  typical  Kentuckian.  Hawthorne 
conversed  with  an  old  man  in  England  who 
told  him  that  the  Kentuckians  flayed  Tecum- 
seh  where  he  fell,  and  converted  his  skin  into 
razor-strops.  Collins,  the  Kentucky  Froissart, 
speaking  of  Kentucky  pioneers,  relates  of  the 
father  of  one  of  them  that  he  knocked  Wash- 
ington down  in  a  quarrel,  and  received  an  apol- 
ogy from  the  Father  of  his  Country  on  the  fol- 
lowing day.  I  have  mentioned  this  typical 
34 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

Hotspur  figure  because  I  knew  it  would  come 
foremost  into  the  mind  of  the  reader  whenever 
one  began  to  speak  with  candor  of  Kentucky- 
life  and  character.  It  was  never  a  true  type  : 
satire  bit  always  into  burlesque  along  lines  of 
coarseness  and  exaggeration.  Much  less  is  it 
true  now,  except  in  so  far  as  it  describes  a  kind 
of  human  being  found  the  world  over. 

But  I  was  saying  that  old  race  qualities  are 
apparent  here,  because  this  is  a  people  of  Eng- 
lish blood  with  hereditary  agricultural  tastes, 
and  because  it  has  remained  to  this  day  largely 
uncommingled  with  foreign  strains.  Here,  for 
instance,  is  the  old  race  conservatism  that  ex- 
pends itself  reverentially  on  established  ways 
and  familiar  customs.  The  building  of  the  first 
great  turnpike  in  this  country  was  opposed  on 
the  ground  that  it  would  shut  up  way-side  tav- 
erns, throw  wagons  and  teams  out  of  employ- 
ment, and  destroy  the  market  for  chickens  and 
oats.  Prior  to  that,  immigration  was  discour- 
aged because  it  would  make  the  already  high 
prices  of  necessary  articles  so  exorbitant  that 
the  permanent  prosperity  of  the  State  would 
receive  a  fatal  check.  True,  however,  this  op- 
position was  not  without  a  certain  philosophy ; 
for  in  those  days  people  went  to  some  distant 
lick  for  their  salt,  bought  it  warm  from  the 
kettle  at  seven  or  eight  cents  a  pound,  and 
35 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

packed  it  home  on  horseback,  so  that  a  fourth 
dropped  away  in  bitter  water.  Coming  back 
to  the  present,  the  huge  yellowish-red  stage- 
coach rolls  to-day  over  the  marbled  roads  of  the 
blue-grass  country.  Families  may  be  found 
living  exactly  where  their  pioneer  ancestors  ef- 
fected a  heroic  settlement — a  landed  aristocra- 
cy, if  there  be  such  in  America.  Family  names 
come  down  from  generation  to  generation,  just 
as  a  glance  at  the  British  peerage  will  show 
that  they  were  long  ago  being  transmitted  in 
kindred  families  over  the  sea.  One  great  hon- 
ored name  will  do  nearly  as  much  in  Kentucky 
as  in  England  to  keep  a  family  in  peculiar  re- 
spect, after  the  reason  for  it  has  ceased.  Here 
is  that  old  invincible  race  ideal  of  personal  lib- 
erty, and  that  old,  unreckoning,  truculent,  ani- 
mal rage  at  whatever  infringes  on  it.  The 
Kentuckians  were  among  the  very  earliest  to 
grant  manhood  suffrage.  Nowhere  in  this 
country  are  the  rights  of  property  more  invio- 
lable, the  violations  of  these  more  surely  pun- 
ished :  neither  counsel  nor  judge  nor  any  power 
whatsoever  can  acquit  a  man  who  has  taken 
fourpence  of  his  neighbor's  goods.  Here  is  the 
old  land -loving,  land -holding,  home -staying, 
home  -  defending  disposition.  This  is  not  the 
lunching,  tourist  race  that,  to  Mr.  Ruskin's 
horror,  leaves  its  crumbs  and  chicken-bones  on 
36 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

the  glaciers.  The  simple  rural  key-note  of  life 
is  still  the  sweetest.  Now,  after  the  lapse  of 
more  than  a  century,  the  most  populous  town 
contains  less  than  twenty  thousand  white  souls. 
Along  with  the  love  of  land  has  gone  compara- 
tive content  with  the  annual  increase  of  flock 
and  field.  No  man  among  them  has  ever  got 
immense  wealth.  Here  is  the  old  se/ise  of  per- 
sonal privacy  and  reserve  which  has  for  cen- 
turies intrenched  the  Englishman  in  the  heart 
of  his  estate,  and  forced  him  to  regard  with  in- 
expugnable discomfort  his  neigihbor's  bounda- 
ries. This  would  have  been  a  densely  peopled 
region,  the  farms  would  have  been  minutely 
subdivided,  had  sons  asked  and  received  per- 
mission to  settle  on  parts  of  the  ancestral  estate. 
This  filling  in  and  too  close  personal  contact 
would  have  satisfied  neither  father  nor  child, 
so  that  the  one  has  generally  kept  his  acres  in- 
tact, and  the  other,  impelled  by  the  same  land- 
hunger  that  brought  his  pioneer  forefather 
hither,  has  gone  hence  into  the  younger  West, 
where  lie  broader  tracts  and  vaster  spaces.  Here 
is  the  old  idea,  somewhat  current  still  in  Eng- 
land, that  the  highest  mark  of  the  gentleman 
is  not  cultivation  of  the  mind,  not  intellect,  not 
knowledge,  but  elegant  living.  Here  is  the  old 
hereditary  devotion  to  the  idea  of  the  State. 
Write  the  biographies  of  the  Kentuckians  who 
37 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

have  been  engaged  in  national  or  in  local  poli- 
tics, and  you  have  largely  the  history  of  the 
State  of  Kentucky.  Write  the  lives  of  all  its 
scientists,  artists,  musicians,  actors,  poets,  nov- 
elists, and  you  find  many  weary  mile-stones  be- 
tween the  chapters. 

Enter  the  blue-grass  region  from  what  point 
you  choose  —  and  you  may  do  this,  so  well 
traversed  is  it  by  railways — and  you  become 
sensitive  to  its  influence.  If  you  come  from 
the  North  or  the  East,  you  say  :  "  This  is  not 
modern  America.  Here  is  something  local 
and  unique.  For  one  thing,  nothing  goes  fast 
here."  By-and-by  you  see  a  blue-grass  race- 
horse, and  note  an  exception.  But  you  do  not 
also  except  the  rider  or  the  driver.  The  speed 
is  not  his.  He  is  a  mere  bunch  of  mistletoe  to 
the  horse.  Detach  him,  and  he  is  not  worth 
timing.  Human  speed  for  the  most  part  lies 
fallow.  Every  man  starts  for  the  goal  of  life 
at  his  own  natural  gait,  and  if  he  sees  that  it 
is  too  far  off  for  him  to  reach  it  in  a  lifetime, 
he  does  not  run  the  faster,  but  has  the  goal 
moved  nearer  him.  The  Kentuckians  are  not 
provincial.  As  Thoreau  said,  no  people  can 
long  remain  provincial  who  have  a  propensity 
for  politics,  whittling,  and  rapid  travelling. 
They  are  not  inaccessible  to  modern  ideas, 
but  the  shock  of  modern  ideas  has  not  elec- 
38 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

trifled  them.  They  have  walled  themselves 
around  with  old  race  instincts  and  habitudes, 
and  when  the  stream  of  tendency  rushes 
against  this  wall,  it  recoils  upon  itself  instead 
of  sweeping  away  the  barrier. 

The  typical  Kentuckian  regards  himself  an 
American  of  the  Americans,  and  thinks  as  lit- 
tle of  being  like  the  English  as  he  would  of 
imitating  the  Jutes.  In  nothing  is  he  more 
like  his  transatlantic  ancestry  than  in  strong 
self -content.  He  sits  on  his  farm  as  though 
it  were  the  pole  of  the  heavens  —  a  manly 
man  with  a  heart  in  him.  Usually  of  the 
blond  type,  robust,  well  formed,  with  clear, 
fair  complexion,  that  grows  ruddier  with  age 
and  stomachic  development,  full  neck,  and  an 
open,  kind,  untroubled  countenance.  He  is 
frank,  but  not  familiar  ;  talkative,  but  not 
garrulous  ;  full  of  the  genial  humor  of  local 
hits  and  allusions,  but  without  a  subtle  nim- 
bleness  of  wit ;  indulgent  towards  purely  mas- 
culine vices,  but  intolerant  of  petty  crimes  ; 
no  reader  of  books  nor  master  in  religious  de- 
bate, faith  coming  to  him  as  naturally  as  his 
appetite,  and  growing  with  what  it  feeds  upon  ; 
loving  roast  pig,  but  not  caring  particularly 
for  Lamb's  eulogy  ;  loving  his  grass  like  a 
Greek,  not  because  it  is  beautiful,  but  because 
it  is  fresh  and  green  ;  a  peaceful  man  with 
39 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

strong  passions,  and  so  to  be  heartily  loved 
and  respected  or  heartily  hated  and  respected, 
but  never  despised  or  trifled  with.  An  occa- 
sional barbecue  in  the  woods,  where  the  sad- 
dles of  South  Down  mutton  are  roasted  on 
spits  over  the  coals  of  the  mighty  trench,  and 
the  steaming  kettles  of  burgoo  lend  their  savor 
to  the  nose  of  the  hungry  political  orator,  so 
that  he  becomes  all  the  more  impetuous  in  his 
invectives ;  the  great  agricultural  fairs  ;  the 
race-courses  ;  the  monthly  county  court  day, 
when  he  meets  his  neighbors  on  the  public 
square  of  the  nearest  town  ;  the  quiet  Sunday 
mornings,  when  he  meets  them  again  for  rather 
more  clandestine  talks  at  the  front  door  of  the 
neighborhood  church — these  and  his  own  fire- 
side are  his  characteristic  and  ample  pleasures. 
You  will  never  be  under  his  roof  without  be- 
ing touched  by  the  mellowest  of  all  the  virtues 
of  his  race — simple,  unsparing  human  kindness 
and  hospitality. 

The  women  of  Kentucky  have  long  had  rep- 
utation for  beauty.  An  average  type  is  a  re- 
finement on  the  English  blonde — greater  deli- 
cacy of  form,  feature,  and  color.  A  beautiful 
Kentucky  woman  is  apt  to  be  exceedingly 
beautiful.  Her  voice  is  low  and  soft ;  her 
hands  and  feet  delicately  formed;  her  skin 
pure  and  beautiful  in  tint  and  shading ;  her 
40 


The  Blue -Grass  Region 

eyes  blue  or  brown,  and  hair  nut  brown  or 
golden  brown  ;  to  all  which  is  added  a  cer- 
tain unapproachable  refinement.  It  must  not 
for  a  moment  be  supposed,  however,  that  there 
are  not  many  genuinely  ugly  women  in  Ken- 
tucky. 


UNCLE  TOM  AT  HOME 


I 


ON  the  outskirts  of  the  towns  of  central 
Kentucky,  a  stranger,  searching  for  the 
picturesque  in  architecture  and  in  life, 
would  find  his  attention  arrested  by  certain 
masses  of  low  frame  and  brick  structures,  and 
by  the  multitudes  of  strange  human  beings  that 
inhabit  them.  A  single  town  may  have  on  its 
edges  several  of  these  settlements,  which  are 
themselves  called  "  towns,"  and  bear  separate 
names  either  descriptive  of  some  topographical 
peculiarity  or  taken  from  the  original  owners 
of  the  lots.  It  is  in  these  that  a  great  part  of 
the  negro  population  of  Kentucky  has  packed 
itself  since  the  war.  Here  live  the  slaves  of  the 
past  with  their  descendants ;  old  family  ser- 
vants from  the  once  populous  country  places ; 
old  wagon-drivers  from  the  deep-rutted  lanes  ; 
old  wood-choppers  from  the  slaughtered  blue- 
grass  forests  ;  old  harvesters  and  ploughmen 
from  the  long  since  abandoned  fields  ;  old  cooks 
from  the  savory,  wasteful  kitchens  ;  old  nurses 
45 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

from  the  softly  rocked  and  softly  sung-to  cra- 
dles. Here,  too,  are  the  homes  of  the  younger 
generation,  of  the  laundresses  and  the  barbers, 
teachers  and  ministers  of  the  gospel,  coachmen 
and  porters,  restaurant-keepers  and  vagabonds, 
hands  from  the  hemp  factories,  and  workmen 
on  the  outlying  farms. 

You  step  easily  from  the  verge  of  the  white 
population  to  the  confines  of  the  black.  But  it 
is  a  great  distance — like  the  crossing  of  a  vast 
continent  between  the  habitats  of  alien  races. 
The  air  seems  all  at  once  to  tan  the  cheek.  Out 
of  the  cold,  blue  recesses  of  the  midsummer  sky 
the  sun  burns  with  a  fierceness  of  heat  that 
warps  the  shingles  of  the  pointed  roofs  and 
flares  with  blinding  brilliancy  against  some 
whitewashed  wall.  Perhaps  in  all  the  street 
no  little  cooling  stretch  of  shade.  The  un- 
paved  sidewalks  and  the  roadway  between  are 
but  undistinguishable  parts  of  a  common  thor- 
oughfare, along  which  every  upspringing  green 
thing  is  quickly  trodden  to  death  beneath  the 
ubiquitous  play  and  passing  of  many  feet.  Here 
and  there,  from  some  shielded  nook  or  other 
coign  of  vantage,  a  single  plumy  branch  of 
dog -fennel  may  be  seen  spreading  its  small 
firmament  of  white  and  golden  stars  close  to 
the  ground  ;  or  between  its  pale  green  stalks 
the  faint  lavender  of  the  nightshade  will  take 
46 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

the  eye  as  the  sole  emblem  of  the  flowering 
world. 

A  negro  town  !  Looking  out  the  doors  and 
windows  of  the  cabins,  lounging  in  the  door- 
ways, leaning  over  the  low  frame  fences,  gath- 
ering into  quickly  forming,  quickly  dissolving 
groups  in  the  dusty  streets,  they  swarm.  They 
are  here  from  milk  -  white  through  all  deep- 
ening shades  to  glossy  blackness  ;  octoroons, 
quadroons,  mulattoes — some  with  large  liquid 
black  eyes,  refined  features,  delicate  forms ; 
working,  gossiping,  higgling  over  prices  around 
a  vegetable  cart,  discussing  last  night's  church 
festival,  to-day's  funeral,  or  next  week's  railway 
excursion,  sleeping,  planning  how  to  get  work 
and  how  to  escape  it.  From  some  unseen  old 
figure  in  flamboyant  turban,  bending  over  the 
wash-tub  in  the  rear  of  a  cabin,  comes  a  crooned 
song  of  indescribable  pathos  ;  behind  a  half- 
closed  front  shutter,  a  Moorish-hued  amoroso  in 
gay  linen  thrums  his  banjo  in  a  measure  of 
ecstatic  gayety  preluding  the  more  passionate 
melodies  of  the  coming  night.  Here  a  fight  ; 
there  the  sound  of  the  fiddle  and  the  rhythmic 
patting  of  hands.  Tatters  and  silks  flaunt  them- 
selves side  by  side.  Dirt  and  cleanliness  lie 
down  together.  Indolence  goes  hand  in  hand 
with  thrift.  Superstition  dogs  the  slow  foot- 
steps of  reason.  Passion  and  self-control  eye 
47 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

each  other  across  the  narrow  way.  If  there  is 
anywhere  resolute  virtue,  round  it  is  a  weltered 
muck  of  low  and  sensual  desire.  One  sees  the 
surviving  types  of  old  negro  life  here  crowded 
together  with  and  contrasted  with  the  new 
phases  of  "colored"  life — sees  the  transitional 
stage  of  a  race,  part  of  whom  were  born  slaves 
and  are  now  freemen,  part  of  whom  have  been 
born  freemen  but  remain  so  much  like  slaves. 

It  cannot  fail  to  happen,  as  you  walk  along, 
that  you  will  come  upon  some  cabin  set  back 
in  a  small  yard  and  half  hidden,  front  and  side, 
by  an  almost  tropical  jungle  of  vines  and  mul- 
tiform foliage  ;  patches  of  great  sunflowers, 
never  more  leonine  in  tawny  magnificence  and 
sun-loving  repose;  festoons  of  white  and  pur- 
ple morning-glories  over  the  windows  and  up 
to  the  low  eaves ;  around  the  porch  and  above 
the  door-way,  a  trellis  of  gourd-vines  swing- 
ing their  long-necked,  grotesque  yellow  fruit  ; 
about  the  entrance  flaming  hollyhocks  and  oth- 
er brilliant  bits  of  bloom,  marigolds  and  petu- 
nias— evidences  of  the  warm,  native  taste  that 
still  distinguishes  the  negro  after  some  centu- 
ries of  contact  with  the  cold,  chastened  ideals 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon. 

In  the  door-way  of  such  a  cabin,  sheltered 
from  the  afternoon  sun  by  his  dense  jungle  of 
vines,  but  with  a  few  rays  of  light  glinting 
48 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

through  the  fluttering  leaves  across  his  seamed 
black  face  and  white  woolly  head,  the  muscles 
of  his  once  powerful  arms  shrunken,  the  gnarl- 
ed hands  folded  idly  in  his  lap — his  occupation 
gone — you  will  haply  see  some  old-time  slave 
of  the  class  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom.  For 
it  is  true  that  scattered  here  and  there  through- 
out the  negro  towns  of  Kentucky  are  represent- 
atives of  the  same  class  that  furnished  her  with 
her  hero;  true,  also,  that  they  were  never  sold 
by  their  Kentucky  masters  to  the  plantations 
of  the  South,  but  remained  unsold  down  to  the 
last  days  of  slavery. 

When  the  war  scattered  the  negroes  of  Ken- 
tucky blindly,  tumultuously,  hither  and  thither, 
many  of  them  gathered  the  members  of  their 
families  about  them  and  moved  from  the  coun- 
try into  these  "  towns  "  ;  and  here  the  few  sur- 
vivors live,  ready  to  testify  of  their  relations 
with  their  former  masters  and  mistresses,  and 
indirectly  serving  to  point  a  great  moral :  that, 
however  justly  Mrs.  Stowe  may  have  chosen 
one  of  their  number  as  best  fitted  to  show  the 
fairest  aspects  of  domestic  slavery  in  the  United 
States,  she  departed  from  the  common  truth  of 
history,  as  it  respected  their  lot  in  life,  when 
she  condemned  her  Uncle  Tom  to  his  tragical 
fate.  For  it  was  not  the  character  of  Uncle 
Tom  that  she  greatly  idealized,  as  has  been  so 
D  49 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

often  asserted  ;  it  was  the  category  of  events 
that  were  made  to  befall  him. 

As  citizens  of  the  American  Republic,  these 
old  negroes — now  known  as  "  colored  gentle- 
men," surrounded  by  "  colored  ladies  and  gentle- 
men " — have  not  done  a  great  deal.  The  bud 
of  liberty  was  ingrafted  too  late  on  the  ancient 
slave-stock  to  bear  much  fruit.  But  they  are 
interesting,  as  contemporaries  of  a  type  of  Ken- 
tucky negro  whose  virtues  and  whose  sorrows, 
dramatically  embodied  in  literature,  have  be- 
come a  by-word  throughout  the  civilized  world. 
And  now  that  the  war  -  cloud  is  lifting  from 
over  the  landscape  of  the  past,  so  that  it  lies 
still  clear  to  the  eyes  of  those  who  were  once 
the  dwellers  amid  its  scenes,  it  is  perhaps  a 
good  time  to  scan  it  and  note  some  of  its  great 
moral  landmarks  before  it  grows  remoter  and 
is  finally  forgotten. 


II 


THESE  three  types — Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle 
Tom,  and  the  Shelbys,  his  master  and 
mistress  —  were  the  outgrowth  of  nat- 
ural and  historic  conditions  peculiar  to  Ken- 
tucky. "Perhaps,"  wrote  Mrs.  Stowe  in  her 
novel,  "  the  mildest  form  of  the  system  of  sla- 
very is  to  be  seen  in  the  State  of  Kentucky. 
The  general  prevalence  of  agricultural  pursuits 
of  a  quiet  and  gradual  nature,  not  requiring 
those  periodic  seasons  of  hurry  and  pressure 
that  are  called  for  in  the  business  of  more 
southern  districts,  makes  the  task  of  the  negro 
a  more  healthful  and  reasonable  one  ;  while 
the  master,  content  with  a  more  gradual  style 
of  acquisition,  had  not  those  temptations  to 
hard-heartedness  which  always  overcome  frail 
human  nature  when  the  prospect  of  sudden  and 
rapid  gain  is  weighed  in  the  balance  with  no 
heavier  counterpoise  than  the  interests  of  the 
helpless  and  unprotected."  These  words  con- 
tain many  truths. 

51 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

For  it  must  not  be  forgotten,  first  of  all,  that 
the  condition  of  the  slave  in  Kentucky  was 
measurably  determined  by  certain  physical 
laws  which  lay  beyond  the  control  of  the 
most  inhuman  master.  Consider  the  nature 
of  the  country — elevated,  rolling,  without  mi- 
asmatic districts  or  fatal  swamps  ;  the  soil  in 
the  main  slave-holding  portions  of  the  State 
easily  tilled,  abundantly  yielding  ;  the  climate 
temperate  and  invigorating.  Consider  the  sys- 
tem of  agriculture  —  not  that  of  vast  planta- 
tions, but  of  small  farms,  part  of  which  regu- 
larly consisted  of  woodland  and  meadow  that 
required  little  attention.  Consider  the  further 
limitations  to  this  system  imposed  by  the  range 
of  the  great  Kentucky  staples — it  being  in  the 
nature  of  corn,  wheat,  hemp,  and  tobacco,  not 
to  yield  profits  sufficient  to  justify  the  employ- 
ment of  an  immense  predial  force,  nor  to  re- 
quire seasons  of  forced  and  exhausting  labor. 
It  is  evident  that  under  such  conditions  slavery 
was  not  stamped  with  those  sadder  features 
which  it  wore  beneath  a  devastating  sun,  amid 
unhealthy  or  sterile  regions  of  country,  and 
through  the  herding  together  of  hundreds  of 
slaves  who  had  the  outward  but  not  the  inward 
discipline  of  an  army.  True,  one  recalls  here 
the  often  quoted  words  of  Jefferson  on  the 
raising  of  tobacco — words  nearly  as  often  mis- 
52 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

applied  as  quoted  ;  for  he  was  considering  the 
condition  of  slaves  who  were  unmercifully 
worked  on  exhausted  lands  by  a  certain  prole- 
tarian type  of  master,  who  did  not  feed  and 
clothe  them.  Only  under  such  circumstances 
could  the  culture  of  this  plant  be  described  as 
"productive  of  infinite  wretchedness,"  and 
those  engaged  in  it  as  "  in  a  continual  state  of 
exertion  beyond  the  powers  of  nature  to  sup- 
port." It  was  by  reason  of  these  physical  facts 
that  slavery  in  Kentucky  assumed  the  phase 
which  is  to  be  distinguished  as  domestic  ;  and 
it  was  this  mode  that  had  prevailed  at  the 
North  and  made  emancipation  easy. 

Furthermore,  in  all  history  the  condition  of 
an  enslaved  race  under  the  enslaving  one  has 
been  partly  determined  by  the  degree  of  moral 
justification  with  which  the  latter  has  regarded 
the  subject  of  human  bondage  ;  and  the  life  of 
the  Kentucky  negro,  say  in  the  days  of  Uncle 
Tom,  was  further  modified  by  the  body  of  laws 
which  had  crystallized  as  the  sentiment  of  the 
people,  slave  -  holders  themselves.  But  even 
these  laws  were  only  a  partial  exponent  of 
what  that  sentiment  was  ;  for  some  of  the  se- 
verest were  practically  a  dead  letter,  and  the 
clemency  of  the  negro's  treatment  by  the  pre- 
vailing type  of  master  made  amends  for  the 
hard  provisions  of  others. 
53 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

It  would  be  a  difficult  thing  to  write  the  his- 
tory of  slavery  in  Kentucky.  It  is  impossible 
to  write  a  single  page  of  it  here.  But  it  may 
be  said  that  the  conscience  of  the  great  body 
of  the  people  was  always  sensitive  touching 
the  rightfulness  of  the  institution.  At  the 
very  outset  it  seems  to  have  been  recognized 
simply  for  the  reason  that  the  early  settlers 
were  emigrants  from  slave-holding  States  and 
brought  their  negroes  with  them.  The  com- 
monwealth began  its  legislation  on  the  sub- 
ject in  the  face  of  an  opposing  sentiment. 
By  early  statute  restriction  was  placed  on 
the  importation  of  slaves,  and  from  the  first 
they  began  to  be  emancipated.  Through- 
out the  seventy  -  five  years  of  pro  -  slavery 
-State  life,  the  general  conscience  was  always 
troubled. 

The  churches  took  up  the  matter.  Great 
preachers,  whose  names  were  influential  beyond 
the  State,  denounced  the  system  from  the  pul- 
pit, pleaded  for  the  humane  and  Christian 
treatment  of  slaves,  advocated  gradual  eman- 
cipation. One  religious  body  after  another 
proclaimed  the  moral  evil  of  it,  and  urged  that 
the  young  be  taught  and  prepared  as  soon  as 
possible  for  freedom.  Antislavery  publications 
and  addresses,  together  with  the  bold  words  of 
great  political  leaders,  acted  as  a  further  leaven 
54 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

in  the  mind  of  the  slave-holding  class.  As  evi- 
dence of  this,  when  the  new  constitution  of  the 
State  was  to  be  adopted,  about  1850,  thirty- 
thousand  votes  were  cast  in  favor  of  an  open 
clause  in  it,  whereby  gradual  emancipation 
should  become  a  law  as  soon  as  the  majority  of 
the  citizens  should  deem  it  expedient  for  the 
peace  of  society  ;  and  these  votes  represented 
the  richest,  most  intelligent  slave  -  holders  in 
the  State. 

In  general  the  laws  were  perhaps  the  mildest. 
Some  it  is  vital  to  the  subject  not  to  pass  over. 
If  slaves  were  inhumanly  treated  by  their  own- 
er or  not  supplied  with  proper  food  and  cloth- 
ing, they  could  be  taken  from  him  and  sold  to 
a  better  master.  This  law  was  not  inoperative. 
I  have  in  mind  the  instance  of  a  family  who 
lost  their  negroes  in  this  way,  were  socially  dis- 
graced, and  left  their  neighborhood.  If  the 
owner  of  a  slave  had  bought  him  on  condition 
of  not  selling  him  out  of  the  county,  or  into  the 
Southern  States,  or  so  as  not  to  separate  him 
from  his  family,  he  could  be  sued  for  violation 
of  contract.  This  law  shows  the  opposition  of 
the  better  class  of  Kentucky  masters  to  the 
slave-trade,  and  their  peculiar  regard  for  the 
family  ties  of  their  negroes.  In  the  earliest 
Kentucky  newspapers  will  be  found  advertise- 
ments of  the  sales  of  negroes,  on  condition  that 
55 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

they  would  be  bought  and  kept  within  the 
county  or  the  State.  It  was  within  chancery 
jurisdiction  to  prevent  the  separation  of  fami- 
lies. The  case  may  be  mentioned  of  a  master 
who  was  tried  by  his  Church  for  unnecessarily 
separating  a  husband  from  his  wife.  Some- 
times slaves  who  had  been  liberated  and  had 
gone  to  Canada  voluntarily  returned  into  ser- 
vice under  their  former  masters.  Lest  these 
should  be  overreached,  they  were  to  be  taken 
aside  and  examined  by  the  court  to  see  that 
they  understood  the  consequences  of  their 
own  action,  and  were  free  from  improper  con- 
straint. On  the  other  hand,  if  a  slave  had 
a  right  to  his  freedom,  he  could  file  a  bill 
in  chancery  and  enforce  his  master's  assent 
thereto. 

But  a  clear  distinction  must  be  made  between 
the  mild  view  entertained  by  the  Kentucky 
slave-holders  regarding  the  system  itself  and 
their  dislike  of  the  agitators  of  forcible  and  im- 
mediate emancipation.  A  community  of  mas- 
ters, themselves  humane  to  their  negroes  and 
probably  intending  to  liberate  them  in  the  end, 
would  yet  combine  into  a  mob  to  put  down  in- 
dividual or  organized  antislavery  efforts,  be- 
cause they  resented  what  they  regarded  as  in- 
terference of  the  abolitionist  with  their  own 
affairs,  and  believed  his  measures  inexpedient 
56 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

for  the  peace  of  society.  Therefore,  the  history 
of  the  antislavery  movement  in  Kentucky,  at 
times  so  turbulent,  must  not  be  used  to  show 
the  sentiment  of  the  people  regarding  slavery 
itself. 


Ill 


FROM  these  general  considerations  it  is 
possible  to  enter  more  closely  upon  a 
study  of  the  domestic  life  and  relations 
of  Uncle  Tom  and  the  Shelbys. 

"  Whoever  visits  some  estates  there,"  wrote 
Mrs.  Stowe,  "  and  witnesses  the  good-humored 
indulgence  of  some  masters  and  mistresses  and 
the  affectionate  loyalty  of  some  slaves,  might 
be  tempted  to  dream  of  the  oft-fabled  poetic 
legend  of  a  patriarchal  institution."  Along 
with  these  words,  taken  from  Uncle  Tom's  Cab- 
in^ I  should  like  to  quote  an  extract  from  a  let- 
ter written  me  by  Mrs.  Stowe  under  date  of 
April  30,  1886  : 

"  In  relation  to  your  letter,  I  would  say  that  I  never 
lived  in  Kentucky,  but  spent  many  years  in  Cincinnati, 
which  is  separated  from  Kentucky  only  by  the  Ohio 
River,  which,  as  a  shrewd  politician  remarked,  was  dry 
one-half  the  year  and  frozen  the  other.  My  father 
was  president  of  a  theological  seminary  at  Walnut 
Hills,  near  Cincinnati,  and  with  him  I  travelled  and 

58 


>       3  '      >       '  >•. 


THE    MAMMY 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

visited  somewhat  extensively  in  Kentucky,  and  there 
became  acquainted  with  those  excellent  slave-holders 
delineated  in  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  I  saw  many  coun- 
terparts of  the  Shelbys — people  humane,  conscien- 
tious, just  and  generous,  who  regarded  slavery  as  an 
evil  and  were  anxiously  considering  their  duties  to  the 
slave.  But  it  was  not  till  I  had  finally  left  the  West, 
and  my  husband  was  settled  as  professor  in  Bowdoin 
College,  Brunswick,  Maine,  that  the  passage  of  the 
fugitive-slave  law  and  the  distresses  that  followed  it 
drew  this  from  me." 

The  typical  boy  on  a  Kentucky  farm  was  ten- 
derly associated  from  infancy  with  the  negroes 
of  the  household  and  the  fields.  His  old  black 
"  Mammy  "  became  almost  his  first  mother,  and 
was  but  slowly  crowded  out  of  his  conscience 
and  his  heart  by  the  growing  image  of  the  true 
one.  She  had  perhaps  nursed  him  at  her  bosom 
when  he  was  not  long  enough  to  stretch  across 
it,  sung  over  his  cradle  at  noon  and  at  midnight, 
taken  him  out  upon  the  velvety  grass  beneath 
the  shade  of  the  elm-trees  to  watch  his  first 
manly  resolution  of  standing  alone  in  the  world 
and  walking  the  vast  distance  of  some  inches. 
Often,  in  boyish  years,  when  flying  from  the 
house  with  a  loud  appeal  from  the  incompre- 
hensible code  of  Anglo-Saxon  punishment  for 
small  misdemeanors,  he  had  run  to  those  black 
arms  and  cried  himself  to  sleep  in  the  lap  of 
59 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

African  sympathy.  As  he  grew  older,  alas !  his 
first  love  grew  faithless  ;  and  while  "  Mammy" 
was  good  enough  in  her  way  and  sphere,  his 
wandering  affections  settled  humbly  at  the  feet 
of  another  great  functionary  of  the  household 
— the  cook  in  the  kitchen.  To  him  her  keys 
were  as  the  keys  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  for 
his  immortal  soul  was  his  immortal  appetite. 
When  he  stood  by  the  biscuit  bench  while  she, 
pausing  amid  the  varied  industries  that  went 
into  the  preparation  of  an  old-time  Kentucky 
supper,  made  him  marvellous  geese  of  dough, 
with  farinaceous  feathers  and  genuine  coffee- 
grains  for  eyes,  there  was  to  him  no  other  artist 
in  the  world  who  possessed  the  secret  of  so  com- 
mingling the  useful  with  the  beautiful. 

The  little  half-naked  imps,  too,  playing  in  the 
dirt  like  glossy  blackbirds  taking  a  bath  of  dust, 
were  his  sweetest,  because  perhaps  his  forbid- 
den, companions.  With  them  he  went  clan- 
destinely to  the  fatal  duck-pond  in  the  stable 
lot,  to  learn  the  art  of  swimming  on  a  walnut 
rail.  With  them  he  raced  up  and  down  the 
lane  on  blooded  alder-stalk  horses,  afterwards 
leading  the  exhausted  coursers  into  stables  of 
green  bushes  and  haltering  them  high  with  a 
cotton  string.  It  was  one  of  these  hatless 
children  of  original  Guinea  that  had  crept  up 
to  him  as  he  lay  asleep  in  the  summer  grass 
60 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

and  told  him  where  the  best  hidden  of  all  nests 
was  to  be  found  in  a  far  fence  corner — that  of 
the  high-tempered,  scolding  guinea-hen.  To 
them  he  showed  his  first  Barlow  knife ;  for 
them  he  blew  his  first  home  -  made  whistle. 
He  is  their  petty  tyrant  to  -  day  ;  to  -  morrow 
he  will  be  their  repentant  friend,  dividing  with 
them  his  marbles  and  proposing  a  game  of  hop- 
scotch. Upon  his  dialect,  his  disposition,  his 
whole  character,  is  laid  the  ineffaceable  impress 
of  theirs,  so  that  they  pass  into  the  final  reck- 
oning-up  of  his  life  here  and  in  the  world  to 
come. 

But  Uncle  Tom  ! — the  negro  overseer  of  the 
place — the  greatest  of  all  the  negroes — greater 
even  than  the  cook,  when  one  is  not  hungry. 
How  often  has  he  straddled  Uncle  Tom's  neck, 
or  ridden  behind  him  afield  on  a  barebacked 
horse  to  the  jingling  music  of  the  trace-chains  ! 
It  is  Uncle  Tom  who  plaits  his  hempen  whip 
and  ties  the  cracker  in  a  knot  that  will  stay. 
It  is  Uncle  Tom  who  brings  him  his  first  young 
squirrel  to  tame,  the  teeth  of  which  are  soon 
to  be  planted  in  his  right  forefinger.  Many  a 
time  he  slips  out  of  the  house  to  take  his  din- 
ner or  supper  in  the  cabin  with  Uncle  Tom  ; 
and  during  long  winter  evenings  he  loves  to 
sit  before  those  great  roaring  cabin  fireplaces 
that  throw  their  red  and  yellow  lights  over  the 
61 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

half  circle  of  black  faces  and  on  the  mysteries 
of  broom  -  making,  chair  -  bottoming,  and  the 
cobbling  of  shoes.  Like  the  child  who  listens 
to  "Uncle  Remus,"  he,  too,  hears  songs  and 
stories,  and  creeps  back  to  the  house  with  a 
wondering  look  in  his  eyes  and  a  vague  hush 
of  spirit. 

Then  come  school-days  and  vacations,  during 
which,  as  Mrs.  Stowe  says,  he  may  teach  Uncle 
Tom  to  make  his  letters  on  a  slate  or  expound 
to  him  the  Scriptures.  Then,  too,  come  early 
adventures  with  the  gun,  and  'coon  hunts  and 
'possum  hunts  with  the  negroes  under  the 
round  moon,  with  the  long-eared,  deep-voiced 
hounds — to  him  delicious  and  ever-memorable 
nights !  The  crisp  air,  through  which  the 
breath  rises  like  white  incense,  the  thick  au- 
tumn leaves,  begemmed  with  frost,  rustling 
underfoot ;  the  shadows  of  the  mighty  trees  ; 
the  strained  ear  ;  the  heart  leaping  with  excite- 
ment ;  the  negroes  and  dogs  mingling  their 
wild  delight  in  music  that  wakes  the  echoes 
of  distant  hill-sides.  Away  !  Away  !  mile  after 
mile,  hour  after  hour,  to  where  the  purple  and 
golden  persimmons  hang  low  from  the  boughs, 
or  where  from  topmost  limbs  the  wild  grape 
drops  its  countless  clusters  in  a  black  cascade 
a  sheer  two  hundred  feet. 

Now  he  is  a  boy  no  longer,  but  has  his  first 
62 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

love-affair,  which  sends  a  thrill  through  all 
those  susceptible  cabins ;  has  his  courtship, 
which  gives  rise  to  many  a  wink  and  innuendo; 
and  brings  home  his  bride,  whose  coming  con- 
verts every  youngster  into  a  living  rolling  ball 
on  the  ground,  and  opens  the  feasts  and  festiv- 
ities of  universal  joy. 

Then  some  day  "  ole  Marster "  dies,  and  the 
negroes,  one  by  one,  young  and  old,  file  into 
the  darkened  parlor  to  take  a  last  look  at  his 
quiet  face.  He  had  his  furious  temper,  "ole 
Marster"  had,  and  his  sins  —  which  God  for- 
give !  To-day  he  will  be  buried,  and  to-mor- 
row "  young  Marster  "  will  inherit  his  saddle- 
horse  and  ride  out  into  the  fields. 

Thus  he  has  come  into  possession  of  his  ne- 
groes. Among  them  are  a  few  whose  working 
days  are  over.  These  are  to  be  kindly  cared 
for,  decently  buried.  Next  are  the  active  la- 
borers, and,  last,  the  generation  of  children. 
He  knows  them  all  by  name,  capacity,  and  dis- 
position ;  is  bound  to  them  by  live-long  asso- 
ciations ;  hears  their  communications  and  com- 
plaints. When  he  goes  to  town,  he  is  charged 
with  commissions,  makes  purchases  with  their 
own  money.  Continuing  the  course  of  his 
father,  he  sets  about  making  them  capable, 
contented  workmen.  There  shall  be  special 
training  for  special  aptitude.  One  shall  be 
63 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

made  a  blacksmith,  a  second  a  carpenter,  a 
third  a  cobbler  of  shoes.  In  all  the  general 
industries  of  the  farm,  education  shall  not  be 
lacking.  It  is  claimed  that  a  Kentucky  negro 
invented  the  hemp-brake.  As  a  result  of  this 
effective  management,  the  Southern  planter, 
looking  northward,  will  pay  him  a  handsome 
premium  for  his  blue -grass  slave.  He  will 
have  no  white  overseer.  He  does  not  like  the 
type  of  man.  Besides,  one  is  not  needed. 
Uncle  Tom  served  his  father  in  this  capacity  ; 
let  him  be. 

Among  his  negroes  he  finds  a  bad  one.  What 
shall  he  do  with  him  ?  Keep  him  ?  Keeping 
him  makes  him  worse,  and,  moreover,  he  cor- 
rupts the  others.  Set  him  free?  That  is  to 
put  a  reward  upon  evil.  Sell  him  to  his  neigh- 
bors ?  They  do  not  want  him.  If  they  did,  he 
would  not  sell  him  to  them.  He  sells  him  into 
the  South.  This  is  a  statement,  not  an  apol- 
ogy. Here,  for  a  moment,  one  touches  the 
terrible  subject  of  the  internal  slave-trade.  Ne- 
groes were  sold  from  Kentucky  into  the  South- 
ern market  because,  as  has  just  been  said,  they 
were  bad,  or  by  reason  of  the  law  of  partible 
inheritance,  or,  as  was  the  case  with  Mrs. 
Stowe's  Uncle  Tom,  under  constraint  of  debt. 
Of  course,  in  many  cases,  they  were  sold 
wantonly  and  cruelly ;  but  these,  however 
64 


•  •  •■  I  . 

•  •  •  •  "  t 

•  •  •  V  ! 
•  •    •    »  s 


THE  COOK 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

many,  were  not  enough  to  make  the  internal 
slave-trade  more  than  an  incidental  and  sub- 
ordinate feature  of  the  system.  The  belief  that 
negroes  in  Kentucky  were  regularly  bred  and 
reared  for  the  Southern  market  is  a  mistaken 
one.  Mrs.  Stowe  herself  fell  into  the  error  of 
basing  an  argument  for  the  prevalence  of  the 
slave-trade  in  this  State  upon  the  notion  of  ex- 
hausted lands,  as  the  following  passage  from 
The  Key  to  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  shows  : 

"  In  Delaware,  Maryland,  Virginia,  and  Kentucky 
slave-labor  long  ago  impoverished  the  soil  almost  be- 
yond recovery  and  became  entirely  unprofitable." 

Those  words  were  written  some  thirty-five 
years  ago  and  refer  to  a  time  long  prior  to  that 
date.  Now,  the  fact  is  that  at  least  one-half 
the  soil  of  Kentucky  has  never  been  under 
cultivation,  and  could  not,  therefore,  have 
been  exhausted  by  slave  -  labor.  At  least  a 
half  of  the  remainder,  though  cultivated  ever 
since,  is  still  not  seriously  exhausted  ;  and  of 
the  small  portion  still  left  a  large  share  was  al- 
ways naturally  poor,  so  that  for  this  reason 
slave -labor  was  but  little  employed  on  it. 
The  great  slave  -  holding  region  of  the  State 
was  the  fertile  region  which  has  never  been 
impoverished.  To  return  from  this  digres- 
sion, it  may  be  well  that  the  typical  Kentucky 
E  65 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

farmer  does  not  find  among  his  negroes  a  bad 
one ;  for  in  consequence  of  the  early  non-im- 
portation of  slaves  for  barter  or  sale,  and 
through  long  association  with  the  household, 
they  have  been  greatly  elevated  and  human- 
ized. If  he  must  sell  a  good  one,  he  will  seek 
a  buyer  among  his  neighbors.  He  will  even 
ask  the  negro  to  name  his  choice  of  a  master 
and  try  to  consummate  his  wish.  No  pur- 
chaser near  by,  he  will  mount  his  saddle-horse 
and  look  for  one  in  the  adjoining  county.  In 
this  way  the  negroes  of  different  estates  and 
neighborhoods  were  commonly  connected  by 
kinship  and  intermarriage.  How  unjust  to 
say  that  such  a  master  did  not  feel  affection 
for  his  slaves,  anxiety  for  their  happiness,  sym- 
pathy with  the  evils  inseparable  from  their  con- 
dition. Let  me  cite  the  case  of  a  Kentucky 
master  who  had  failed.  He  could  pay  his  debts 
by  sacrificing  his  negroes  or  his  farm,  one  or 
the  other.  To  avoid  separating  the  former, 
probably  sending  some  of  them  South,  he  kept 
them  in  a  body  and  sold  his  farm.  Any  one 
who  knows  the  Kentuckian's  love  of  land  and 
home  will  know  what  this  means.  A  few  years, 
and  the  war  left  him  without  anything.  An- 
other case  is  more  interesting  still.  A  master 
having  failed,  actually  hurried  his  negroes  off 
to  Canada.  Tried  for  defrauding  his  creditors, 
66 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

and  that  by  slave  -  holding  jurors,  he  was  ac- 
quitted. The  plea  of  his  counsel,  among  other 
arguments,  was  the  master's  unwillingness  to 
see  his  old  and  faithful  servitors  scattered  and 
suffering.  After  emancipation  old  farm  hands 
sometimes  refused  to  budge  from  their  cabins. 
Their  former  masters  paid  them  for  their  ser- 
vices as  long  as  they  could  work,  and  support- 
ed them  when  helpless.  I  have  in  mind  an  in- 
stance where  a  man,  having  left  Kentucky, 
sent  back  hundreds  of  dollars  to  an  aged,  needy 
domestic,  though  himself  far  from  rich  ;  and 
another  case  where  a  man  still  contributes  an- 
nually to  the  maintenance  of  those  who  ceased 
to  work  for  him  the  quarter  of  a  century  ago. 
The  good  in  human  nature  is  irrepressible. 
Slavery,  evil  as  it  was,  when  looked  at  from 
the  remoteness  of  human  history  as  it  is  to  be, 
will  be  adjudged  an  institution  that  gave  de- 
velopment to  certain  noble  types  of  character. 
Along  with  other  social  forces  peculiar  to  the 
age,  it  produced  in  Kentucky  a  kind  of  farmer, 
the  like  of  which  will  never  appear  again.  He 
had  the  aristocratic  virtues :  highest  notions 
of  personal  liberty  and  personal  honor,  a  fine 
especial  scorn  of  anything  that  was  mean,  lit- 
tle, cowardly.  As  an  agriculturist  he  was  not 
driving  or  merciless  or  grasping  ;  the  rapid 
amassing  of  wealth  was  not  among  his  pas- 
67 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

sions,  the  contention  of  splendid  living  not 
among  his  thorns.  To  a  certain  carelessness 
of  riches  he  added  a  certain  profuseness  of  ex- 
penditure ;  and  indulgent  towards  his  own 
pleasures,  towards  others,  his  equals  or  de- 
pendents, he  bore  himself  with  a  spirit  of 
kindness  and  magnanimity.  Intolerant  of 
tyranny,  he  was  no  tyrant.  To  say  of  such  a 
man,  as  Jefferson  said  of  every  slave-holder, 
that  he  lived  in  perpetual  exercise  of  the  most 
boisterous  passions  and  unremitting  despotism, 
and  in  the  exaction  of  the  most  degrading  sub- 
mission, was  to  pronounce  judgment  hasty  and 
unfair.  Rather  did  Mrs.  Stowe,  while  not  blind 
to  his  faults,  discern  his  virtues  when  she  made 
him,  embarrassed  by  debt,  exclaim  :  "  If  any- 
body had  said  to  me  that  I  should  sell  Tom 
down  South  to  one  of  those  rascally  traders,  I 
should  have  said, '  Is  thy  servant  a  dog  that  he 
should  do  this  thing  ?' " 


IV 


BUT  there  was  another  person  who,  more 
than  the  master,  sustained  close  rela- 
tionship to  the  negro  life  of  the  house- 
hold —  the  mistress.  In  the  person  of  Mrs. 
Shelby,  Mrs.  Stowe  described  some  of  the  best 
traits  of  a  Kentucky  woman  of  the  time ;  but 
perhaps  only  a  Southern  woman  herself  could 
do  full  justice  to  a  character  which  many  du- 
ties and  many  burdens  endued  with  extraor- 
dinary strength  and  varied  efficiency. 

She  was  mistress  of  distinct  realms  —  the 
house  and  the  cabins — and  the  guardian  of  the 
bonds  between  the  two,  which  were  always 
troublesome,  often  delicate,  sometimes  distress- 
ing. In  those  cabins  were  nearly  always  some 
poor  creatures  needing  sympathy  and  watch- 
care  :  the  superannuated  mothers  helpless  with 
babes,  babes  helpless  without  mothers,  the  sick, 
perhaps  the  idiotic.  Apparel  must  be  had  for 
all.  Standing  in  her  doorway  and  pointing  to 
the  meadow,  she  must  be  able  to  say  in  the 
69 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

words  of  a  housewife  of  the  period,  "  There  are 
the  sheep  ;  now  get  your  clothes."  Some  must 
be  taught  to  keep  the  spindle  and  the  loom  go- 
ing ;  others  trained  for  dairy,  laundry,  kitchen, 
dining-room  ;  others  yet  taught  fine  needle- 
work. Upon  her  fell  the  labor  of  private  in- 
struction and  moral  exhortation,  for  the  teach- 
ing of  negroes  was  not  forbidden  in  Kentucky. 
She  must  remind  them  that  their  marriage 
vows  are  holy  and  binding  ;  must  interpose  be- 
tween mothers  and  their  cruel  punishment  of 
their  own  offspring.  Hardest  of  all,  she  must 
herself  punish  for  lying,  theft,  immorality.  Her 
own  children  must  be  guarded  against  tempta- 
tion and  corrupting  influences.  In  her  life  no 
cessation  of  this  care  year  in  and  year  out. 
Beneath  every  other  trouble  the  secret  convic- 
tion that  she  has  no  right  to  enslave  these  creat- 
ures, and  that,  however  improved  their  con- 
dition, their  life  is  one  of  great  and  necessary 
evils.  Mrs.  Stowe  well  makes  her  say  :  "I  have 
tried — tried  most  faithfully  as  a  Christian  wom- 
an should — to  do  my  duty  towards  these  poor, 
simple,  dependent  creatures.  I  have  cared  for 
them,  instructed  them,  watched  over  them,  and 
known  all  their  little  cares  and  joys  for  years. . . . 
I  have  taught  them  the  duties  of  the  family,  of 
parent  and  child,  and  husband  and  wife.  ...  I 
thought,  by  kindness  and  care  and  instruction, 
70 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

I  could  make  the  condition  of  mine  better  than 
freedom."  Sorely  overburdened  and  heroic 
mould  of  woman  !  Fulfilling  each  day  a  round 
of  intricate  duties,  rising  at  any  hour  of  the 
night  to  give  medicine  to  the  sick,  liable  at  any 
time,  in  addition  to  the  cares  of  her  great  house- 
hold, to  see  an  entire  family  of  acquaintances 
arriving  unannounced,  with  trunks  and  ser- 
vants of  their  own,  for  a  visit  protracted  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  large  hospitalities  of  the  time. 
What  wonder  if,  from  sheer  inability  to  do  all 
things  herself,  she  trains  her  negroes  to  differ- 
ent posts  of  honor,  so  that  the  black  cook  finally 
expels  her  from  her  own  kitchen  and  rules  over 
that  realm  as  an  autocrat  of  unquestioned  pre- 
rogatives? 

Mistresses  of  this  kind  had  material  reward 
in  the  trusty  adherence  of  their  servants  dur- 
ing the  war.  Their  relations  throughout  this 
period — so  well  calculated  to  try  the  loyalty  of 
the  African  nature — would  of  themselves  make 
up  a  volume  of  the  most  touching  incidents. 
Even  to-day  one  will  find  in  many  Kentucky 
households  survivals  of  the  old  order — find 
"  Aunt  Chloe  "  ruling  as  a  despot  in  the  kitch- 
en, and  making  her  will  the  pivotal  point  of  the 
whole  domestic  system.  I  have  spent  nights 
with  a  young  Kentuckian,  self-willed  and  high- 
spirited,  whose  occasional  refusals  to  rise  for  a 
71 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

half-past  five  o'clock  breakfast  always  brought 
the  cook  from  the  kitchen  up  to  his  bedroom, 
where  she  delivered  her  commands  in  a  voice 
worthy  of  Catherine  the  Great.  "  We  shall  have 
to  get  up,"  he  would  say,  "  or  there'll  be  a  row  ! " 
One  may  yet  see  old  negresses  setting  out  for 
an  annual  or  a  semi-annual  visit  to  their  former 
mistresses,  and  bearing  some  offering — a  basket 
of  fruits  or  flowers.  I  should  like  to  mention 
the  case  of  one  who  died  after  the  war  and  left 
her  two  children  to  her  mistress,  to  be  reared 
and  educated.  The  troublesome,  expensive 
charge  was  faithfully  executed. 

Here,  in  the  hard  realities  of  daily  life,  here 
is  where  the  crushing  burden  of  slavery  fell — 
on  the  women  of  the  South.  History  has  yet 
to  do  justice  to  the  noblest  type  of  them,  wheth- 
er in  Kentucky  or  elsewhere.  In  view  of  what 
they  accomplished,  despite  the  difficulties  in 
their  way,  there  is  nothing  they  have  found 
harder  to  forgive  in  the  women  of  the  North 
than  the  failure  to  sympathize  with  them  in  the 
struggles  and  sorrows  of  their  lot,  and  to  real- 
ize that  they  were  the  real  practical  philanthro- 
pists of  the  negro  race. 


BUT  as  is  the  master,  so  is  the  slave,  and  it 
is  through  the  characters  of  the  Shelbys 
that  we  must  approach  that  of  Uncle 
Tom.  For  of  all  races,  the  African — super- 
stitious, indolent,  singing,  dancing,  impression- 
able creature — depends  upon  others  for  enlight- 
enment, training,  and  happiness.  If,  therefore, 
you  find  him  so  intelligent  that  he  may  be  sent 
on  important  business,  so  honest  that  he  may 
be  trusted  with  money,  house,  and  home,  so 
loyal  that  he  will  not  seize  opportunity  to  be- 
come free ;  if  you  find  him  endowed  with  the 
manly  virtues  of  dignity  and  self-respect  united 
to  the  Christian  virtues  of  humility,  long-suf- 
fering, and  forgiveness,  then  do  not,  in  marvel- 
ling at  him  on  these  accounts,  quite  forget  his 
master  and  his  mistress — they  made  him  what 
he  was.  And  it  is  something  to  be  said  on  their 
behalf,  that  in  their  household  was  developed  a 
type  of  slave  that  could  be  set  upon  a  sublime 
moral  pinnacle  to  attract  the  admiration  of  the 
world. 

73 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

Attention  is  fixed  on  Uncle  Tom  first  as 
head -servant  of  the  farm.  In  a  small  work 
on  slavery  in  Kentucky  by  George  Harris,  it 
is  stated  that  masters  chose  the  crudest  of 
their  negroes  for  this  office.  It  is  not  true, 
exceptions  allowed  for.  The  work  would  not 
be  worth  mentioning,  had  not  so  many  people 
at  the  North  believed  it.  The  amusing  thing 
is,  they  believed  Mrs.  Stowe  also.  But  if  Mrs. 
Stowe's  account  of  slavery  in  Kentucky  is  true, 
Harris's  is  not. 

It  is  true  that  Uncle  Tom  inspired  the  other 
negroes  with  some  degree  of  fear.  He  was 
censor  of  morals,  and  reported  derelictions  of 
the  lazy,  the  destructive,  and  the  thievish. 
For  instance,  an  Uncle  Tom  on  one  occasion 
told  his  master  of  the  stealing  of  a  keg  of  lard, 
naming  the  thief  and  the  hiding-place.  "  Say 
not  a  word  about  it,"  replied  his  master.  The 
next  day  he  rode  out  into  the  field  where  the 
culprit  was  ploughing,  and,  getting  down, 
walked  along  beside  him.  "What's  the  mat- 
ter, William  ?"  he  asked,  after  a  while ;  "  you 
can't  look  me  in  the  face  as  usual."  William 
burst  into  tears,  and  confessed  everything. 
"Come  to-night,  and  I  will  arrange  so  that 
you  can  put  the  lard  back  and  nobody  will 
ever  know  you  took  it."  The  only  punish- 
ment was  a  little  moral  teaching ;  but  the 
74 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

Uncle  Tom  in  the  case,  though  he  kept  his 
secret,  looked  for  some  days  as  though  the  dig- 
nity of  his  office  had  not  been  suitably  upheld 
by  his  master. 

It  was  Uncle  Tom's  duty  to  get  the  others 
off  to  work  in  the  morning.  In  the  fields  he 
did  not  drive  the  work,  but  led  it  —  being  a 
master  -  workman  —  led  the  cradles  and  the 
reaping  -  hooks,  the  hemp  -  breaking  and  the 
corn  -  shucking.  The  spirit  of  happy  music 
went  with  the  workers.  They  were  not  goad- 
ed through  their  daily  tasks  by  the  spur  of 
pitiless  husbandry.  Nothing  was  more  com- 
mon than  their  voluntary  contests  of  skill  and 
power.  My  recollection  reaches  only  to  the 
last  two  or  three  years  of  slavery;  but  I  re- 
member the  excitement  with  which  I  witnessed 
some  of  these  hard-fought  battles  of  the  ne- 
groes. Rival  hemp-breakers  of  the  neighbor- 
hood, meeting  in  the  same  field,  would  slip 
out  long  before  breakfast  and  sometimes  nev- 
er stop  for  dinner.  So  it  was  with  cradling, 
corn -shucking,  or  corn -cutting  —  in  all  work 
where  rivalries  were  possible.  No  doubt  there 
were  other  motives.  So  much  work  was  a 
day's  task  ;  for  more  there  was  extra  pay.  A 
capital  hand,  by  often  performing  double  or 
treble  the  required  amount,  would  clear  a 
neat  profit  in  a  season.  The  days  of  severest 
75 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

labor  fell  naturally  in  harvest-time.  But  then 
intervals  of  rest  in  the  shade  were  commonly 
given;  and  milk,  coffee,  or,  when  the  prejudice 
of  the  master  did  not  prevent  (which  was  not 
often),  whiskey  was  distributed  between  meal- 
times. As  a  rule,  they  worked  without  hurry. 
De  Tocqueville  gave  unintentional  testimony 
to  characteristic  slavery  in  Kentucky  when  he 
described  the  negroes  as  "loitering"  in  the 
fields.  On  one  occasion  the  hands  dropped 
work  to  run  after  a  rabbit  the  dogs  had  start- 
ed. A  passer-by  indignantly  reported  the  fact 
to  the  master.  "  Sir,"  said  the  old  gentle- 
man, with  a  hot  face,  "  I'd  have  whipped  the 
last  d — n  rascal  of  'em  if  they  hadn't  run 
'im  !" 

The  negroes  made  money  off  their  truck- 
patches,  in  which  they  raised  melons,  broom- 
corn,  vegetables.  When  Charles  Sumner  was 
in  Kentucky,  he  saw  with  almost  incredulous 
eyes  the  comfortable  cabins  with  their  flowers 
and  poultry,  the  fruitful  truck-patches,  and  a 
genuine  Uncle  Tom — "  a  black  gentleman  with 
his  own  watch  !"  Well  enough  does  Mrs.  Stowe 
put  these  words  into  her  hero's  mouth,  when 
he  hears  he  is  to  be  sold  :  "  I'm  feared  things 
will  be  kinder  goin'  to  rack  when  I'm  gone. 
Mas'r  can't  be  'spected  to  be  a-pryin'  round 
everywhere  as  I've  done,  a-keepin'  up  all  the 
76 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

ends.     The  boys  means  well,  but  they's  power- 
ful car'less." 

More  interesting  is  Uncle  Tom's  character 
as  a  preacher.  Contemporary  with  him  in 
Kentucky  was  a  class  of  men  among  his  peo- 
ple who  exhorted,  held  prayer-meetings  in  the 
cabins  and  baptizings  in  the  woods,  performed 
marriage  ceremonies,  and  enjoyed  great  free- 
dom of  movement.  There  was  one  in  nearly 
every  neighborhood,  and  together  they  wrought 
effectively  in  the  moral  development  of  their 
race.  I  have  nothing  to  say  here  touching  the 
vast  and  sublime  conception  which  Mrs.  Stowe 
formed  of  "  Uncle  Tom's "  spiritual  nature. 
But  no  idealized  manifestation  of  it  is  better 
than  this  simple  occurrence  :  One  of  these  ne- 
gro preachers  was  allowed  by  his  master  to  fill 
a  distant  appointment.  Belated  once,  and  re- 
turning home  after  the  hour  forbidden  for 
slaves  to  be  abroad,  he  was  caught  by  the  pa- 
trol and  cruelly  whipped.  As  the  blows  fell, 
his  only  words  were:  "Jesus  Christ  suffered 
for  righteousness'  sake ;  so  kin  I."  Another 
of  them  was  recommended  for  deacon's  orders 
and  actually  ordained.  When  liberty  came,  he 
refused  to  be  free,  and  continued  to  work  in 
his  master's  family  till  his  death.  With  con- 
siderable knowledge  of  the  Bible  and  a  fluent 
tongue,  he  would  nevertheless  sometimes  grow 

n 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

confused  while  preaching  and  lose  his  train  of 
thought.  At  these  embarrassing  junctures  it 
was  his  wont  suddenly  to  call  out  at  the  top  of 
his  voice,  "  Saul !  Saul !  why  persecutest  thou 
me  ?"  The  effect  upon  his  hearers  was  electri- 
fying ;  and  as  none  but  a  very  highly  favored 
being  could  be  thought  worthy  of  enjoying 
this  persecution,  he  thus  converted  his  loss  of 
mind  into  spiritual  reputation.  A  third,  named 
Peter  Cotton,  united  the  vocations  of  exhorter 
and  wood-chopper.  He  united  them  literally, 
for  one  moment  Peter  might  be  seen  standing 
on  his  log  chopping  away,  and  the  next  kneel- 
ing down  beside  it  praying.  He  got  his  mis- 
tress to  make  him  a  long  jeans  coat  and  on  the 
ample  tails  of  it  to  embroider,  by  his  direction, 
sundry  texts  of  Scripture,  such  as  :  "  Come 
unto  me,  all  ye  that  are  heavy  laden  !"  Thus 
literally  clothed  with  righteousness,  Peter  went 
from  cabin  to  cabin  preaching  the  Word. 
Well  for  him  if  that  other  Peter  could  have 
seen  him. 

These  men  sometimes  made  a  pathetic  ad- 
dition to  their  marriage  ceremonies  :  "  Until 
death  or  our  higher  powers  diO  you  separate!" 

Another  typical  contemporary  of  Uncle 
Tom's  was  the  negro  fiddler.  It  should  be  re- 
membered that  before  he  hears  he  is  to  be  sold 
South,  Uncle  Tom  is  pictured  as  a  light-heart- 
78 


THE  PREACHER 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

ed  creature,  capering  and  dancing  in  his  cabin. 
There  was  no  lack  of  music  in  those  cabins. 
The  banjo  was  played,  but  more  commonly  the 
fiddle.  A  home-made  variety  of  the  former 
consisted  of  a  crook-necked,  hard-shell  gourd 
and  a  piece  of  sheepskin.  There  were  some- 
times other  instruments^-the  flageolet  and  the 
triangle.  I  have  heard  of  a  kettle-drum's  being 
made  of  a  copper  still.  A  Kentucky  negro  car- 
ried through  the  war  as  a  tambourine  the  skull 
of  a  mule,  the  rattling  teeth  being  secured  in 
the  jawbones.  Of  course  bones  were  every- 
where used.  Negro  music  on  one  or  more  in- 
struments was  in  the  highest  vogue  at  the  house 
of  the  master.  The  young  Kentuckians  often 
used  it  on  serenading  bravuras.  The  old  fid- 
dler, most  of  all,  was  held  in  reverent  esteem 
and  met  with  the  gracious  treatment  of  the 
minstrel  in  feudal  halls.  At  parties  and  wed- 
dings, at  picnics  in  the  summer  woods,  he  was 
the  soul  of  melody  ;  and  with  an  eye  to  the 
high  demands  upon  his  art,  he  widened  his 
range  of  selections  and  perfected  according  to 
native  standards  his  inimitable  technique.  The 
deep,  tender,  pure  feeling  in  the  song  "Old 
Kentucky  Home  "  is  a  true  historic  interpre- 
tation. 

It  is  wide  of  the  mark  to  suppose  that  on 
such  a  farm  as  that  of  the  Shelbys,  the  negroes 
79 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

were  in  a  perpetual  frenzy  of  discontent  or  felt 
any  burning  desire  for  freedom.  It  is  difficult 
to  reach  a  true  general  conclusion  on  this  deli- 
cate subject.  But  it  must  go  for  something 
that  even  the  Kentucky  abolitionists  of  those 
days  will  tell  you  that  well -treated  negroes 
cared  not  a  snap  for  liberty.  Negroes  them- 
selves, and  very  intelligent  ones,  will  give  you 
to-day  the  same  assurance.  It  is  an  awkward 
discovery  to  make,  that  some  of  them  still  cher- 
ish resentment  towards  agitators  who  came  se- 
cretly among  them,  fomented  discontent,  and 
led  them  away  from  homes  to  which  they  af- 
terwards returned.  And  I  want  to  state  here, 
for  no  other  reason  than  that  of  making  an  his- 
toric contribution  to  the  study  of  the  human 
mind  and  passions,  that  a  man's  views  of  slavery 
in  those  days  did  not  determine  his  treatment 
of  his  own  slaves.  The  only  case  of  mutiny 
and  stampede  that  I  have  been  able  to  discover 
in  a  certain  part  of  Kentucky,  took  place  among 
the  negroes  of  a  man  who  was  known  as  an  out- 
spoken emancipationist.  He  pleaded  for  the 
freedom  of  the  negro,  but  in  the  mean  time 
worked  him  at  home  with  the  chain  round  his 
neck  and  the  ball  resting  on  his  plough. 

Christmas  was,  of  course,  the  time  of  holiday 
merrymaking,  and  the  "  Ketchin'  marster  an' 
mistiss  Christmus  gif  "  was  a  great  feature. 
80 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

One  morning  an  aged  couple  presented  them- 
selves. 

"Well,  what  do  you  want  for  your  Christmas 
gift  r 

"  Freedom,  mistiss  !" 

"  Freedom  !  Haven't  you  been  as  good  as 
free  for  the  last  ten  years  ?" 

"Yaas,  mistiss  ;  but — freedom  mighty  sweet!" 

"  Then  take  your  freedom  !" 

The  only  method  of  celebrating  the  boon  was 
the  moving  into  a  cabin  on  the  neighboring 
farm  of  their  mistress's  aunt  and  being  freely 
supported  there  as  they  had  been  freely  sup- 
ported at  home. 

Mrs.  Stowe  has  said,  "  There  is  nothing  pict- 
uresque or  beautiful  in  the  family  attachmeiit 
of  old  servants,  which  is  not  to  be  found  in 
countries  where  these  servants  are  legally  free." 
On  the  contrary,  a  volume  of  incidents  might 
readily  be  gathered,  the  picturesqueness  and 
beauty  of  which  are  due  wholly  to  the  fact  that 
the  negroes  were  not  free,  but  slaves.  Indeed, 
many  could  never  have  happened  at  all  but  in 
this  relationship.  I  cite  the  case  of  an  old  ne- 
gro who  was  buying  his  freedom  from  his  mas- 
ter, who  continued  to  make  payments  during 
the  war,  and  made  the  final  one  at  the  time  of 
General  Kirby  Smith's  invasion  of  Kentucky. 
After  he  had  paid  him  the  uttermost  farthing, 
F  8i 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

he  told  him  that  if  he  should  ever  be  a  slave 
again,  he  wanted  him  for  his  master.  Take  the 
case  of  an  old  negress  who  had  been  allowed 
to  accumulate  considerable  property.  At  her 
death  she  willed  it  to  her  young  master  instead 
of  to  her  sons,  as  she  would  have  been  allowed 
to  do.  But  the  war  !  what  is  to  be  said  of  the 
part  the  negro  took  in  that  ?  Is  there  in  the 
drama  of  humanity  a  figure  more  picturesque 
or  more  pathetic  than  the  figure  of  the  African 
slave,  as  he  followed  his  master  to  the  battle- 
field, marched  and  hungered  and  thirsted  with 
him,  served  and  cheered  and  nursed  him — that 
master  who  was  fighting  to  keep  him  in  slavery  ? 
Instances  are  too  many  ;  but  the  one  may  be 
mentioned  of  a  Kentucky  negro  who  followed 
his  young  master  into  the  Southern  army, 
stayed  with  him  till  he  fell  on  the  field,  lay  hid 
out  in  the  bushes  a  week,  and  finally,  after  a 
long  time  and  many  hardships,  got  back  to  his 
mistress  in  Kentucky,  bringing  his  dead  mas- 
ter's horse  and  purse  and  trinkets.  This  sub- 
ject comprises  a  whole  vast  field  of  its  own  ; 
and  if  the  history  of  it  is  ever  written,  it  will 
be  written  in  the  literature  of  the  South,  for 
there  alone  lies  the  knowledge  and  the  love. 

It  is  only  through  a  clear  view  of  the  peculiar 
features  of  slavery  in  Kentucky  before  the  war 
that  one  can  understand  the  general  status  of 
82 


Uncle  Tom  at  Home 

the  negroes  of  Kentucky  at  the  present  time. 
Perhaps  in  no  other  State  has  the  race  made 
less  endeavor  to  push  itself  into  equality  with 
the  white.  This  fact  must  he  explained  as  in 
part  resulting  from  the  conservative  ideals  of 
Kentucky  life  in  general.  But  it  is  more  large- 
ly due  to  the  influences  of  a  system  which, 
though  no  longer  in  vogue,  is  still  remember- 
ed, still  powerful  to  rule  the  minds  of  a  natu- 
rally submissive  and  susceptible  people.  The 
kind,  affectionate  relations  of  the  races  under 
the  old  regime  have  continued  with  so  little  in- 
terruption that  the  blacks  remain  content  with 
their  inferiority,  and  lazily  drift  through  life. 
I  venture  to  make  the  statement  that,  wherever 
in  the  United  States  they  have  attempted  most 
to  enforce  their  new-born  rights,  they  have 
either,  on  the  one  hand,  been  encouraged  to  do 
so,  or  have,  on  the  other,  been  driven  to  self- 
assertion  by  harsh  treatment.  But  treated  al- 
ways kindly,  always  as  hopelessly  inferior  be- 
ings, they  will  do  least  for  themselves.  This, 
it  is  believed,  is  the  key-note  to  the  situation  in 
Kentucky  at  the  present  time. 


COUNTY  COURT  DAY  IN  KENTUCKY 


1 


THE  institutions  of  the  Kentuckian  have 
deep  root  in  his  rich  social  nature.  He 
loves  the  swarm.  The  very  motto  of 
the  State  is  a  declaration  of  good-fellowship, 
and  the  seal  of  the  commonwealth  the  act  of 
shaking  hands.  Divided,  he  falls.  The  Ken- 
tuckian must  be  one  of  many ;  must  assert  him- 
self, not  through  the  solitary  exercise  of  his 
intellect,  but  the  senses  ;  must  see  men  about 
him  who  are  fat ;  grip  his  friend,  hear  cordial, 
hearty  conversation,  realize  the  play  of  his  emo- 
tions.    Society  is  the  multiple  of  himself. 

Hence  his  fondness  for  large  gatherings : 
open-air  assemblies  of  the  democratic  sort — 
great  agricultural  fairs,  race-courses,  political 
meetings,  barbecues  and  burgoos  in  the  woods 
— where  no  one  is  pushed  to  the  wall,  or  re- 
duced to  a  seat  and  to  silence,  where  all  may 
move  about  at  will,  seek  and  be  sought,  make 
and  receive  impressions.  Quiet  masses  of  peo- 
ple in-doors  absorb  him  less.  He  is  not  fond  of 
87 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

lectures,  does  not  build  splendid  theatres  or  ex- 
pend lavishly  for  opera,  is  almost  of  Puritan 
excellence  in  the  virtue  of  church-going,  which 
in  the  country  is  attended  with  neighborly  re- 
unions. 

This  large  social  disposition  underlies  the 
history  of  the  most  social  of  all  his  days — a  day 
that  has  long  had  its  observance  embedded  in 
the  structure  of  his  law,  is  invested  with  the 
authority  and  charm  of  old-time  usage  and 
reminiscence,  and  still  enables  him  to  com- 
mingle business  and  pleasure  in  a  way  of  his 
own.  Hardly  more  characteristic  of  the  Athe- 
nian was  the  agora,  or  the  forum  of  the  Roman, 
than  is  county  court  day  characteristic  of  the 
Kentuckian.  In  the  open  square  around  the 
court-house  of  the  county-seat  he  has  had  the 
centre  of  his  public  social  life,  the  arena  of  his 
passions  and  amusements,  the  rallying-point  of 
his  political  discussions,  the  market-place  of  his 
business  transactions,  the  civil  unit  of  his  in- 
stitutional history. 

It  may  be  that  some  stranger  has  sojourned 
long  enough  in  Kentucky  to  have  grown  famil- 
iar with  the  wonted  aspects  of  a  county  town. 
He  has  remarked  the  easy  swing  of  its  daily 
life  :  amicable  groups  of  men  sitting  around 
the  front  entrances  of  the  hotels  ;  the  few  pur- 
chasers and  promenaders  on  the  uneven  brick 
88 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

pavements  ;  the  few  vehicles  of  draught  and 
carriage  scattered  along  the  level  white  thor- 
oughfares. All  day  the  subdued  murmur  of 
patient  local  traffic  has  scarcely  drowned  the 
twittering  of  English  sparrows  in  the  maples. 
Then  comes  a  Monday  morning  when  the  whole 
scene  changes.  The  world  has  not  been  dead, 
but  only  sleeping.  Whence  this  sudden  surg- 
ing crowd  of  rural  folk — these  lowing  herds  in 
the  streets  ?  Is  it  some  animated  pastoral  come 
to  town  ?  some  joyful  public  anniversary  ?  some 
survival  in  altered  guise  of  the  English  coun- 
try fair  of  mellower  times  ?  or  a  vision  of  what 
the  little  place  will  be  a  century  hence,  when 
American  life  shall  be  packed  and  agitated  and 
tense  all  over  the  land?  What  a  world  of 
homogeneous,  good-looking,  substantial,  re- 
poseful people  with  honest  front  and  amiable 
meaning !  What  bargaining  and  buying  and 
selling  by  ever-forming,  ever-dissolving  groups, 
with  quiet  laughter  and  familiar  talk  and  end- 
less interchange  of  domestic  interrogatories  ! 
You  descend  into  the  street  to  study  the  doings 
and  spectacles  from  a  nearer  approach,  and 
stop  to  ask  the  meaning  of  it.  Ah!  it  is  county 
court  day  in  Kentucky  ;  it  is  the  Kentuckians 
in  the  market-place. 


II 


THEY  have  been  assembling  here  now  for 
nearly  a  hundred  years.  One  of  the  first 
demands  of  the  young  commonwealth 
in  the  woods  was  that  its  vigorous,  passionate 
life  should  be  regulated  by  the  usages  of  civil 
law.  Its  monthly  county  courts,  with  justices 
of  the  peace,  were  derived  from  the  Virginia 
system  of  jurisprudence,  where  they  formed  the 
aristocratic  feature  of  the  government.  Vir- 
ginia itself  owed  these  models  to  England;  and 
thus  the  influence  of  the  courts  and  of  the  de- 
cent and  orderly  yeomanry  of  both  lands  passed, 
as  was  singularly  fitting,  over  into  the  ideals 
of  justice  erected  by  the  pure-blooded  colony. 
As  the  town-meeting  of  Boston  town  perpet- 
uated the  folkmote  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  free 
state,  and  the  Dutch  village  communities  on 
the  shores  of  the  Hudson  revived  the  older 
ones  on  the  banks  of  the  Rhine,  so  in  Ken- 
tucky, through  Virginia,  there  were  transplant- 
ed by  the  people,  themselves  of  clean  stock  and 
90 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

with  strong  conservative  ancestral  traits,  the 
influences  and  elements  of  English  law  in  rela- 
tion to  the  county,  the  court,  and  the  justice 
of  the  peace. 

Through  all  the  old  time  of  Kentucky  State 
life  there  towers  up  the  figure  of  the  justice  of 
the  peace.  Commissioned  by  the  Governor  to 
hold  monthly  court,  he  had  not  always  a  court- 
house wherein  to  sit,  but  must  buy  land  in  the 
midst  of  a  settlement  or  town  whereon  to  build 
one,  and  build  also  the  contiguous  necessity  of 
civilization — a  jail.  In  the  rude  court-room  he 
had  a  long  platform  erected,  usually  running 
its  whole  width  ;  on  this  platform  he  had  a 
ruder  wooden  bench  placed,  likewise  extend- 
ing all  the  way  across  ;  and  on  this  bench,  hav- 
ing ridden  into  town,  it  may  be,  in  dun-colored 
leggings,  broadcloth  pantaloons,  a  pigeon-tailed 
coat,  a  shingle  -  caped  overcoat,  and  a  twelve- 
dollar  high  fur  hat,  he  sat  gravely  and  sturdily 
down  amid  his  peers ;  looking  out  upon  the 
bar,  ranged  along  a  wooden  bench  beneath, 
and  prepared  to  consider  the  legal  needs  of  his 
assembled  neighbors.  Among  them  all  the 
very  best  was  he ;  chosen  for  age,  wisdom, 
means,  weight  and  probity  of  character ;  as  a 
rule,  not  profoundly  versed  in  the  law,  perhaps 
knowing  nothing  of  it — being  a  Revolutionary 
soldier,  a  pioneer,  or  a  farmer  —  but  endowed 
91 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

with  a  sure,  robust  common-sense  and  recti- 
tude of  spirit  that  enabled  him  to  divine  what 
the  law  was  ;  shaking  himself  fiercely  loose 
from  the  grip  of  mere  technicalities,  and  decid- 
ing by  the  natural  justice  of  the  case ;  giving 
decisions  of  equal  authority  with  the  highest 
court,  an  appeal  being  rarely  taken  ;  perpet- 
uating his  own  authority  by  appointing  his 
own  associates  :  with  all  his  shortcomings  and 
weaknesses  a  notable,  historic  figure,  high- 
minded,  fearless,  and  incorruptible,  dignified, 
patient,  and  strong,  and  making  the  county 
court  days  of  Kentucky  for  wellnigh  half  a 
century  memorable  to  those  who  have  lived 
to  see  justice  less  economically  and  less  honor- 
ably administered. 

But  besides  the  legal  character  and  intent  of 
the  day  which  was  thus  its  first  and  dominant 
feature,  divers  things  drew  the  folk  together. 
Even  the  justice  himself  may  have  had  quite 
other  than  magisterial  reasons  for  coming  to 
town  ;  certainly  the  people  had.  They  must 
interchange  opinions  about  local  and  national 
politics,  observe  the  workings  of  their  own  laws, 
pay  and  contract  debts,  acquire  and  transfer 
property,  discuss  all  questions  relative  to  the 
welfare  of  the  community — holding,  in  fact,  a 
county  court  day  much  like  one  in  Virginia 
in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
92 


m 


BUT  after  business  was  over,  time  hung 
idly  on  their  hands  ;  and  being  vigorous 
men,  hardened  by  work  in  forest  and 
field,  trained  in  foot  and  limb  to  fleetness  and 
endurance,  and  fired  with  admiration  of  phys- 
ical prowess,  like  riotous  school-boys  out  on  a 
half-holiday,  they  fell  to  playing.  All  through 
the  first  quarter  of  the  century,  and  for  a  lon- 
ger time,  county  court  day  in  Kentucky  was, 
at  least  in  many  parts  of  the  State,  the  occa- 
sion for  holding  athletic  games.  The  men, 
young  or  in  the  sinewy  manhood  of  more  than 
middle  age,  assembled  once  a  month  at  the 
county-seats  to  witness  and  take  part  in  the 
feats  of  muscle  and  courage.  They  wrestled, 
threw  the  sledge,  heaved  the  bar,  divided  and 
played  at  fives,  had  foot-races  for  themselves, 
and  quarter-races  for  their  horses.  By-and-by, 
as  these  contests  became  a  more  prominent 
feature  of  the  day,  they  would  pit  against  each 
other  the  champions  of  different  neighbor- 
93 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

hoods.  It  would  become  widely  known  before- 
hand that  next  county  court  day  "  the  bully  " 
in  one  end  of  the  county  would  whip  "the 
bully  "  in  the  other  end ;  so  when  court  day 
came,  and  the  justices  came,  and  the  bullies 
came,  what  was  the  county  to  do  but  come 
also  ?  The  crowd  repa.'red  to  the  common,  a 
ring  was  formed,  the  little  men  on  the  outside 
who  couldn't  see,  Zaccheus  -  like,  took  to  the 
convenient  trees,  and  there  was  to  be  seen  a 
fair  and  square  set-to,  in  which  the  fist  was  the 
battering-ram  and  the  biceps  a  catapult.  What 
better,  more  time  -  honored  proof  could  those 
backwoods  Kentuckians  have  furnished  of  the 
humors  in  their  English  blood  and  of  their 
English  pugnacity?  But,  after  all,  this  was 
only  play,  and  play  never  is  perfectly  satisfy- 
ing to  a  man  who  would  rather  fight ;  so  from 
playing  they  fell  to  harder  work,  and  through- 
out this  period  county  court  day  was  the 
monthly  Monday  on  which  the  Kentuckian 
regularly  did  his  fighting.  He  availed  himself 
liberally  of  election  day,  it  is  true,  and  of  regi- 
mental muster  in  the  spring  and  battalion  mus- 
ter in  the  fall — great  gala  occasions ;  but  county 
court  day  was  by  all  odds  the  preferred  and  high- 
ly prized  season.  It  was  periodical,  and  could 
be  relied  upon,  being  written  in  the  law,  noted 
in  the  almanac,  and  registered  in  the  heavens. 
94 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

A  capital  day,  a  most  admirable  and  serene 
day  for  fighting.  Fights  grew  like  a  fresh- 
water polype — by  being  broken  in  two  :  each 
part  produced  a  progeny.  So  conventional 
did  the  recreation  become  that  difficulties  oc- 
curring out  in  the  country  between  times  regu- 
larly had  their  settlements  postponed  until  the 
belligerents  could  convene  with  the  justices. 
The  men  met  and  fought  openly  in  the  streets, 
the  friends  of  each  standing  by  to  see  fair  play 
and  whet  their  appetites. 

Thus  the  justices  sat  quietly  on  the  bench 
inside,  and  the  people  fought  quietly  in  the 
streets  outside,  and  the  day  of  the  month  set 
apart  for  the  conservation  of  the  peace  became 
the  approved  day  for  individual  war.  There 
is  no  evidence  to  be  had  that  either  the  jus- 
tices or  the  constables  ever  interfered. 

These  pugilistic  encounters  had  a  certain 
law  of  beauty  :  they  were  affairs  of  equal  com- 
bat and  of  courage.  The  fight  over,  animosity 
was  gone,  the  feud  ended.  The  men  must 
shake  hands,  go  and  drink  together,  become 
friends.  We  are  touching  here  upon  a  grave 
and  curious  fact  of  local  history.  The  fighting 
habit  must  be  judged  by  a  wholly  unique  stand- 
ard. It  was  the  direct  outcome  of  racial  traits 
powerfully  developed  by  social  conditions. 
95 


IV 


ANOTHER  noticeable  recreation  of  the  day 
was  the  drinking.  Indeed,  the  two  pleas- 
^  ures  went  marvellously  well  together. 
The  drinking  led  up  to  the  fighting,  and  the 
fighting  led  up  to  the  drinking  ;  and  this  amia- 
ble co-operation  might  be  prolonged  at  will.  The 
merchants  kept  barrels  of  whiskey  in  their  cel- 
lars for  their  customers.  Bottles  of  it  sat  open- 
ly on  the  counter,  half-way  between  the  pocket 
of  the  buyer  and  the  shelf  of  merchandise. 
There  were  no  saloons  separate  from  the  tav- 
erns. At  these  whiskey  was  sold  and  drunk 
without  screens  or  scruples.  It  was  not  usu- 
ally bought  by  the  drink,  but  by  the  tickler. 
The  tickler  was  a  bottle  of  narrow  shape,  hold- 
ing a  half-pint — just  enough  to  tickle.  On  a 
county  court  day  wellnigh  a  whole  town  would 
be  tickled.  In  some  parts  of  the  State  tables 
were  placed  out  on  the  sidewalks,  and  around 
these  the  men  sat  drinking  mint  -  juleps  and 
playing  draw-poker  and  "  old  sledge." 
96 


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•^      V        *••'    /- 


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III    n  A  u  \^ 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

Meantime  the  day  was  not  wholly  given  over 
to  playing  and  fighting  and  drinking.  More 
and  more  it  was  becoming  the  great  public  day 
of  the  month,  and  mirroring  the  life  and  spirit 
of  the  times — on  occasion  a  day  of  fearful,  mo- 
mentous gravity,  as  in  the  midst  of  war,  finan- 
cial distress,  high  party  feeling ;  more  and 
more  the  people  gathered  together  for  discus- 
sion and  the  origination  of  measures  determin- 
ing the  events  of  their  history.  Gradually  new 
features  incrusted  it.  The  politician,  observ- 
ing the  crowd,  availed  himself  of  it  to  announce 
his  own  candidacy  or  to  wage  a  friendly  cam- 
paign, sure,  whether  popular  or  unpopular,  of 
a  courteous  hearing  ;  for  this  is  a  virtue  of  the 
Kentuckian,  to  be  polite  to  a  public  speaker, 
however  little  liked  his  cause.  In  the  spring, 
there  being  no  fairs,  it  was  the  occasion  for  ex- 
hibiting the  fine  stock  of  the  country,  which 
was  led  out  to  some  suburban  pasture,  where 
the  owners  made  speeches  over  it.  In  the  win- 
ter, at  the  close  of  the  old  or  the  beginning  of 
the  new  year,  negro  slaves  were  regularly  hired 
out  on  this  day  for  the  ensuing  twelvemonth, 
and  sometimes  put  upon  the  block  before  the 
court-house  door  and  sold  for  life. 

But  it  was  not  until  near  the  half  of  the  sec- 
ond quarter  of  the  century  that  an  auctioneer 
originated  stock  sales  on  the  open  square,  and 
G  97 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

thus  gave  to  the  day  the  characteristic  it  has 
since  retained  of  being  the  great  market-day  of 
the  month.  Thenceforth  its  influence  was  to 
be  more  widely  felt,  to  be  extended  into  other 
counties  and  even  States  ;  thenceforth  it  was 
to  become  more  distinctively  a  local  institution 
without  counterpart. 

To  describe  minutely  the  scenes  of  a  county 
court  day  in  Kentucky,  say  at  the  end  of  the 
half-century,  would  be  to  write  a  curious  page 
in  the  history  of  the  times  ;  for  they  were  pos- 
sible only  through  the  unique  social  conditions 
they  portrayed.  It  was  near  the  most  prosper- 
ous period  of  State  life  under  the  old  regime. 
The  institution  of  slavery  was  about  to  cul- 
minate and  decline.  Agriculture  had  about  as 
nearly  perfected  itself  as  it  was  ever  destined 
to  do  under  the  system  of  bondage.  The  war 
cloud  in  the  sky  of  the  future  could  be  covered 
with  the  hand,  or  at  most  with  the  country  gen- 
tleman's broad-brimmed  straw-hat.  The  whole 
atmosphere  of  the  times  was  heavy  with  ease, 
and  the  people,  living  in  perpetual  contempla- 
tion of  their  superabundant  natural  wealth,  bore 
the  quality  of  the  land  in  their  manners  and 
dispositions. 

When  the  well-to-do  Kentucky  farmer  got 
up  in  the  morning,  walked  out  into  the  porch, 
stretched  himself,  and  looked  at  the  sun,  he 
98 


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County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

knew  that  he  could  summon  a  sleek,  kindly  ne- 
gro to  execute  every  wish  and  whim — one  to 
search  for  his  misplaced  hat,  a  second  to  bring 
him  a  dipper  of  ice-water,  a  third  to  black  his 
shoes,  a  fourth  to  saddle  his  horse  and  hitch  it 
at  the  stiles,  a  fifth  to  cook  his  breakfast,  a  sixth 
to  wait  on  him  at  the  table,  a  seventh  to  stand 
on  one  side  and  keep  off  the  flies.  Breakfast 
over,  he  mounted  his  horse  and  rode  out  where 
"the  hands"  were  at  work.  The  chance  was 
his  overseer  or  negro  foreman  was  there  before 
him  :  his  presence  was  unnecessary.  What  a 
gentleman  he  was  !  This  was  called  earning 
one's  bread  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow.  Whose 
brow?  He  yawned.  What  should  he  do  ?  One 
thing  he  knew  he  would  do — take  a  good  nap 
before  dinner.  Perhaps  he  had  better  ride  over 
to  the  blacksmith-shop.  However,  there  was 
nobody  there.  It  was  county  court  day.  The 
sky  was  blue,  the  sun  golden,  the  air  delightful, 
the  road  broad  and  smooth,  the  gait  of  his  horse 
the  very  poetry  of  motion.  He  would  go  to 
county  court  himself.  There  was  really  noth- 
ing else  before  him.  His  wife  would  want  to 
go,  too,  and  the  children. 

So  away  they  go,  he  on  horseback  or  in  the 

family  carriage,  with  black  Pompey  driving  in 

front  and  yellow  Caesar  riding  behind.     The 

turnpike  reached,  the  progress  of  the  family 

99 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

carriage  is  interrupted  or  quite  stopped,  for 
there  are  many  other  carriages  on  the  road, 
all  going  in  the  same  direction.  Then  pa, 
growing  impatient,  orders  black  Pompey  to 
drive  out  on  one  side,  whip  up  the  horses,  pass 
the  others,  and  get  ahead,  so  as  to  escape  from 
the  clouds  of  white  limestone  dust,  which  set- 
tles thick  on  the  velvet  collar  of  pa's  blue 
cloth  coat  and  in  the  delicate  pink  marabou 
feathers  of  ma's  bonnet :  which  Pompey  can't 
do,  for  the  faster  he  goes,  the  faster  the  oth- 
ers go,  making  all  the  more  dust ;  so  that  pa 
gets  red  in  the  face,  and  jumps  up  in  the  seat, 
and  looks  ready  to  fight,  and  thrusts  his  head 
out  of  the  window  and  knocks  off  his  hat ; 
and  ma  looks  nervous,  and  black  Pompey  and 
yellow  Caesar  both  look  white  with  dust  and 
fear. 

A  rural  cavalcade  indeed  !  Besides  the  car- 
riages, buggies,  horsemen,  and  pedestrians, 
there  are  long  droves  of  stock  being  hurried  on 
towards  the  town — hundreds  of  them.  By  the 
time  they  come  together  in  the  town  they  will 
be  many  thousands.  For  is  not  this  the  great 
stock-market  of  the  West,  and  does  not  the 
whole  South  look  from  its  rich  plantations  and 
cities  up  to  Kentucky  for  bacon  and  mules? 
By-and-by  our  family  carriage  does  at  last  get 
to  town,  and  is  left  out  in  the  streets  along  with 

lOO 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

many  others  to  block  up  the  passway  according 
to  the  custom. 

The  town  is  packed.  It  looks  as  though  by 
some  vast  suction  system  it  had  with  one  exer- 
cise of  force  drawn  all  the  country  life  into  it- 
self. The  poor  dumb  creatures  gathered  in 
from  the  peaceful  fields,  and  crowded  around 
the  court-house,  send  forth,  each  after  its  kind, 
a  general  outcry  of  horror  and  despair  at  the 
tumult  of  the  scene  and  the  unimaginable  mys- 
tery of  their  own  fate.  They  overflow  into  the 
by-streets,  where  they  take  possession  of  the 
sidewalks,  and  debar  entrance  at  private  resi- 
dences. No  stock-pens  wanted  then  ;  none  want- 
ed now.  If  a  town  legislates  against  these  stock 
sales  on  the  streets  and  puts  up  pens  on  its  out- 
skirts, straightway  the  stock  is  taken  to  some 
other  market,  and  the  town  is  punished  for  its 
airs  by  a  decline  in  its  trade. 

As  the  day  draws  near  noon,  the  tide  of  life 
is  at  the  flood.  Mixed  in  with  the  tossing  horns 
and  nimble  heels  of  the  terrified,  distressed, 
half-maddened  beasts,  are  the  people.  Above 
the  level  of  these  is  the  discordant  choir  of 
shrill-voiced  auctioneers  on  horseback.  At  the 
corners  of  the  streets  long-haired — and  long- 
eared — doctors  in  curious  hats  lecture  to  eager 
groups  on  maladies  and  philanthropic  cures. 
Every  itinerant  vender  of  notion  and  nostrum 

lOI 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

in  the  country-side  is  there  ;  every  wandering 
Italian  harper  or  musician  of  any  kind,  be  he 
but  a  sightless  fiddler,  who  brings  forth  with 
poor  unison  of  voice  and  string  the  brief  and 
too  fickle  ballads  of  the  time,  "  Gentle  Annie," 
and  "  Sweet  Alice,  Ben  Bolt."  Strangely  con- 
trasted with  everything  else  in  physical  type 
and  marks  of  civilization  are  the  mountaineers, 
who  have  come  down  to  "the  settlemints" 
driving  herds  of  their  lean,  stunted  cattle,  or 
bringing,  in  slow-moving,  ox-drawn  "  steam- 
boat "  wagons,  maple-sugar,  and  baskets,  and 
poles,  and  wild  mountain  fruit — faded  wagons, 
faded  beasts,  faded  clothes,  faded  faces,  faded 
everything.  A  general  day  for  buying  and 
selling  all  over  the  State.  What  purchases  at 
the  dry-goods  stores  and  groceries  to  keep  all 
those  negroes  at  home  fat  and  comfortable  and 
comely — cottons,  and  gay  cottonades,  and  gor- 
geous turbans,  and  linseys  of  prismatic  dyes, 
bags  of  Rio  coffee  and  barrels  of  sugar,  with 
many  another  pleasant  thing  !  All  which  will 
not  be  taken  home  in  the  family  carriage,  but 
in  the  wagon  which  Scipio  Africanus  is  driving 
in  ;  Scipio,  remember ;  for  while  the  New-Eng- 
lander  has  been  naming  his  own  flesh  and  blood 
Peleg  and  Hezekiah  and  Abednego,  the  Ken- 
tuckian  has  been  giving  even  his  negro  slaves 
mighty  and  classic  names,  after  his  taste  and 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

fashion.  But  very  mockingly  and  satirically 
do  those  victorious  titles  contrast  with  the  con- 
dition of  those  that  wear  them.  A  surging  pop- 
ulace, an  in -town  holiday  for  all  rural  folk, 
wholly  unlike  what  may  be  seen  elsewhere  in 
this  country.  The  politician  will  be  sure  of  his 
audience  to-day  in  the  court-house  yard  ;  the 
seller  will  be  sure  of  the  purchaser  ;  the  idle 
man  of  meeting  one  still  idler  ;  friend  of  seeing 
distant  friend ;  blushing  Phyllis,  come  in  to  buy 
fresh  ribbons,  of  being  followed  through  the 
throng  by  anxious  Corydon. 

And  what,  amid  this  tumult  of  life  and  affairs 
— what  of  the  justice  of  the  peace,  whose  figure 
once  towered  up  so  finely  ?  Alas  !  quite  out- 
grown, pushed  aside,  and  wellnigh  forgotten. 
The  very  name  of  the  day  which  once  so  sternly 
commemorated  the  exercise  of  his  authority 
has  wandered  into  another  meaning.  "County 
court  day  "  no  longer  brings  up  in  the  mind  the 
image  of  the  central  court-house  and  the  judge 
on  the  bench.  It  is  to  be  greatly  feared  his 
noble  type  is  dying.  The  stain  of  venality  has 
soiled  his  homespun  ermine,  and  the  trail  of  the 
office-seeker  passed  over  his  rough-hewn  bench. 
So  about  this  time  the  new  constitution  of  the 
commonwealth  comes  in,  to  make  the  auto- 
cratic ancient  justice  over  into  the  modern 
elective  magistrate,  and  with  the  end  of  the 
103 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

half-century  to  close  a  great  chapter  of  wonder- 
ful county  court  days. 

But  what  changes  in  Kentucky  since  1850  ! 
How  has  it  fared  with  the  day  meantime  ?  What 
development  has  it  undergone  ?  What  con- 
trasts will  it  show  ? 

Undoubtedly,  as  seen  now,  the  day  is  not 
more  interesting  by  reason  of  the  features  it 
wears  than  for  the  sake  of  comparison  with  the 
others  it  has  lost.  A  singular  testimony  to  the 
conservative  habits  of  the  Kentuckian,  and  to 
the  stability  of  his  local  institutions,  is  to  be 
found  in  the  fact  that  it  should  have  come 
through  all  this  period  of  upheaval  and  down- 
fall, of  shifting  and  drifting,  and  yet  remained 
so  much  the  same.  Indeed,  it  seems  in  nowise 
liable  to  lose  its  meaning  of  being  the  great 
market  and  general  business  day  as  well  as  the 
great  social  and  general  laziness  day  of  the 
month  and  the  State.  Perhaps  one  feature  has 
taken  larger  prominence — the  eager  canvassing 
of  voters  by  local  politicians  and  office-seek- 
ers for  weeks,  sometimes  for  months,  before- 
hand. Is  it  not  known  that  even  circuit  court 
will  adjourn  on  this  day  so  as  to  give  the  clerk 
and  the  judge,  the  bar,  the  witnesses,  an  oppor- 
tunity to  hear  rival  candidates  address  the  as- 
sembled crowd?  And  yet  we  shall  discover 
differences.  These  people  — these  groups  of 
104 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

twos  and  threes  and  hundreds,  lounging,  sit- 
ting, squatting,  taking  every  imaginable  post- 
ure that  can  secure  bodily  comfort — are  they 
in  any  vital  sense  new  Kentuckians  in  the  new 
South  ?  If  you  care  to  understand  whether  this 
be  true,  and  what  it  may  mean  if  it  is  true,  you 
shall  not  find  a  better  occasion  for  doing  so  than 
a  contemporary  county  court  day. 

The  Kentuckian  nowadays  does  not  come  to 
county  court  to  pick  a  quarrel  or  to  settle  one. 
He  has  no  quarrel.  His  fist  has  reverted  to 
its  natural  use  and  become  a  hand.  Nor  does 
he  go  armed.  Positively  it  is  true  that  gentle- 
men in  this  State  do  not  now  get  satisfaction 
out  of  each  other  in  the  market-place,  and  that 
on  a  modern  county  court  day  a  three-cornered 
hat  is  hardly  to  be  seen.  And  yet  you  will  go 
on  defining  a  Kentuckian  in  terms  of  his  grand- 
father, unaware  that  he  has  changed  faster  than 
the  family  reputation.  The  fighting  habit  and 
the  shooting  habit  were  both  more  than  satis- 
fied during  the  Civil  War. 

Another  old-time  feature  of  the  day  has  dis- 
appeared— the  open  use  of  the  pioneer  bever- 
age. Merchants  do  not  now  set  it  out  for  their 
customers  ;  in  the  country  no  longer  is  it  the 
law  of  hospitality  to  offer  it  to  a  guest.  To  do 
so  would  commonly  be  regarded  in  the  light  of 
as  great  a  liberty  as  to  have  omitted  it  once 
105 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

would  have  been  considered  an  offence.  The 
decanter  is  no  longer  found  on  the  sideboard 
in  the  home  ;  the  barrel  is  not  stored  in  the 
cellar. 

Some  features  of  the  old  Kentucky  market- 
place have  disappeared.  The  war  and  the 
prostration  of  the  South  destroyed  that  as  a 
market  for  certain  kinds  of  stock,  the  raising 
and  sales  of  which  have  in  consequence  de- 
clined. Railways  have  touched  the  eastern 
parts  of  the  State,  and  broken  up  the  distant, 
toilsome  traffic  with  the  steamboat  wagons  of 
the  mountaineers.  No  longer  is  the  day  the 
general  buying  day  for  the  circumjacent  coun- 
try as  formerly,  when  the  farmers,  having  great 
households  of  slaves,  sent  in  their  wagons  and 
bought  on  twelve-months'  credit,  knowing  it 
would  be  twenty-four  months'  if  they  desired. 
The  doctors,  too,  have  nearly  vanished  from 
the  street  corners,  though  on  the  highway  one 
may  still  happen  upon  the  peddler  with  his 
pack,  and  in  the  midst  of  an  eager  throng  still 
may  meet  the  swaying,  sightless  old  fiddler, 
singing  to  ears  that  never  tire  gay  ditties  in  a 
cracked  and  melancholy  tone. 

Through  all  changes  one  feature  has  re- 
mained. It  goes  back  to  the  most  ancient 
days  of  local  history.  The  Kentuckian  will 
come  to  county  court  "to  swap  horses";  it  is 
io6 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

in  the  blood.  In  one  small  town  may  be  seen 
fifty  or  a  hundred  countrymen  assembled  dur- 
ing the  afternoon  in  a  back  street  to  engage  in 
this  delightful  recreation.  Each  rides  or  leads 
his  worst,  most  objectionable  beast ;  of  these, 
however  fair-seeming,  none  is  above  suspicion. 
It  is  the  potter's  field,  the  lazar-house,  the  beg- 
gardom  of  horse  -  flesh.  The  stiff  and  aged 
bondsman  of  the  glebe  and  plough  looks  out 
of  one  filmy  eye  upon  the  hopeless  wreck  of 
the  fleet  roadster,  and  the  poor  macerated  car- 
cass that  in  days  gone  by  bore  its  thankless 
,burden  over  the  glistening  turnpikes  with  the 
speed  and  softness  of  the  wind  has  not  the 
strength  to  return  the  contemptuous  kick 
which  is  given  him  by  a  lungless,  tailless 
rival.  Prices  range  from  nothing  upward. 
Exchanges  are  made  for  a  piece  of  tobacco  or 
a  watermelon  to  boot. 

But  always  let  us  return  from  back  streets 
and  side  thoughts  to  the  central  court-house 
square  and  the  general  assembly  of  the  peo- 
ple. Go  among  them  ;  the}^  are  not  danger- 
ous. Do  not  use  fine  words,  at  which  they  will 
prick  up  their  ears  uneasily ;  or  delicate  senti- 
ments, which  will  make  you  less  liked  ;  or  in- 
dulge in  flights  of  thought,  which  they  despise. 
Remember,  here  is  the  dress  and  the  talk  and 
the  manners  of  the  street,  and  fashion  yourself 
107 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

accordingly.  Be  careful  of  your  speech  ;  men 
in  Kentucky  are  human.  If  you  can  honestly 
praise  them,  do  so.  How  they  will  glow  and 
expand  !  Censure,  and  you  will  get  the  cold 
shoulder.  For  to  them  praise  is  friendship  and 
censure  enmity.  They  have  wonderful  solidar- 
ity. Sympathy  will  on  occasion  flow  through 
them  like  an  electric  current,  so  that  they  will 
soften  and  melt,  or  be  set  on  fire.  There  is  a 
Kentucky  sentiment,  expending  itself  in  com- 
placent, mellow  love  of  the  land,  the  people, 
the  institutions.  You  speak  to  them  of  the 
happiness  of  living  in  parts  of  the  world  where 
life  has  infinite  variety,  nobler  general  possi- 
bilities, greater  gains,  harder  struggles ;  they 
say,  "  We  are  just  as  happy  here."  "  It  is  ea- 
sier to  make  a  living  in  Kentucky  than  to  keep 
from  being  run  over  in  New  York,"  said  a 
young  Kentuckian  ;  and  home  he  went. 

If  you  attempt  to  deal  with  them  in  the  busi- 
ness of  the  market-place,  do  not  trick  or  cheat 
them.  Above  all  things  they  hate  and  despise 
intrigue  and  deception.  For  one  single  act  of 
dishonor  a  man  will  pay  with  life-long  aversion 
and  contempt.  The  rage  it  puts  them  in  to 
be  charged  with  lying  themselves  is  the  exact 
measure  of  the  excitement  with  which  they  re- 
gard the  lie  in  others.  This  is  one  of  their 
idols — an  idol  of  the  market-place  in  the  true 
1 08 


GENTLEMEN    OF   LEISURE 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

meaning  of  the  Baconian  philosophy.  The  new 
Kentuckian  has  not  lost  an  old-time  trait  of 
character  :  so  high  and  delicate  a  sense  of  per- 
sonal honor  that  to  be  told  he  lies  is  the  same 
as  saying  he  has  ceased  to  be  a  gentleman. 
Along  with  good  faith  and  fair  dealing  goes 
liberality.  Not  prodigality  ;  they  have  changed 
all  that.  The  fresh  system  of  things  has  pro- 
duced no  more  decided  result  than  a  different 
regard  for  material  interests.  You  shall  not 
again  charge  the  Kentuckians  with  lacking 
either  "the  telescopic  appreciation  of  distant 
gain,"  or  the  microscopic  appreciation  of  pres- 
ent gain.  The  influence  of  money  is  active, 
and  the  illusion  of  wealth  become  a  reality. 
Profits  are  now  more  likely  to  pass  into  accu- 
mulation and  structure.  There  is  more  discus- 
sion of  costs  and  values.  Small  economies  are 
more  dwelt  upon  in  thought  and  conversation. 
Actually  you  shall  find  the  people  higgling  with 
the  dealer  over  prices.  And  yet  how  signifi- 
cant a  fact  is  it  in  their  life  that  the  merchant 
does  not,  as  a  rule,  give  exact  change  over  the 
counter  !  At  least  the  cent  has  not  yet  been 
put  under  the  microscope. 

Perhaps  you  will  not  accept  it  as  an  evidence 

of  progress  that  so  many  men  will  leave  their 

business  all  over  the  country  for  an  idle  day 

once  a  month  in  town — nay,  oftener  than  once 

109 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

a  month  ;  for  many  who  are  at  county  court  in 
this  place  to-day  will  attend  it  in  another  coun- 
ty next  Monday.  But  do  not  be  deceived  by 
the  lazy  appearance  of  the  streets.  There  are 
fewer  idlers  than  of  old.  You  may  think  this 
quiet  group  of  men  who  have  taken  possession 
of  a  buggy  or  a  curb-stone  are  out  upon  a  cost- 
ly holiday.  Draw  near,  and  it  is  discovered  that 
there  is  fresh,  eager,  intelligent  talk  of  the  new- 
est agricultural  implements  and  of  scientific 
farming.  In  fact,  the  day  is  to  the  assembled 
farmers  the  seed-time  of  ideas,  to  be  scattered 
in  ready  soil — an  informal,  unconscious  meet- 
ing of  grangers. 

There  seems  to  be  a  striking  equality  of  sta- 
tions and  conditions.  Having  travelled  through 
many  towns,  and  seen  these  gatherings  togeth- 
er of  all  classes,  you  will  be  pleased  with  the 
fair,  attractive,  average  prosperity,  and  note 
the  almost  entire  absence  of  paupers  and  beg- 
gars. Somehow  misfortune  and  ill-fortune  and 
old  age  save  themselves  here  from  the  last  hard 
necessity  of  asking  alms  on  the  highway.  But 
the  appearance  of  the  people  will  easily  lead  you 
to  a  wrong  inference  as  to  social  equality.  They 
are  much  less  democratic  than  they  seem,  and 
their  dress  and  speech  and  manners  in  the 
market-place  are  not  their  best  equipment. 
You  shall  meet  with  these  in  their  homes.  In 
no 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

their  homes,  too,  social  distinctions  begin  and 
are  enforced,  and  men  who  find  in  the  open 
square  a  common  footing  never  associate  else- 
v/here.  But  even  among  the  best  of  the  new 
Kentuckians  will  you  hardly  observe  fidelity  to 
the  old  social  ideals,  which  adjudged  that  the 
very  flower  of  birth  and  training  must  bloom 
in  the  bearing  and  deportment.  With  the 
crumbling  and  downfall  of  the  old  system  fell 
also  the  structure  of  fine  manners,  which  were 
at  once  its  product  and  adornment. 


VI 


ANEW  figure  has  made  its  appearance  in 
the  Kentucky  market-place,  having  set 
its  face  resolutely  towards  the  immemo- 
rial court-house  and  this  periodic  gathering  to- 
gether of  freemen.  Beyond  comparison  the 
most  significant  new  figure  that  has  made  its 
way  thither  and  cast  its  shadow  on  the  people 
and  the  ground.  Writ  all  over  with  problems 
that  not  the  wisest  can  read.  Stalking  out  of 
an  awful  past  into  what  uncertain  future ! 
Clothed  in  hanging  rags,  it  may  be,  or  a  garb 
that  is  a  mosaic  of  strenuous  patches.  Ah ! 
Pompey,  or  Caesar,  or  Cicero,  of  the  days  of 
slavery,  where  be  thy  family  carriage,  thy  mas- 
ter and  mistress,  now  ? 

He  comes  into  the  county  court,  this  old  Af- 
rican, because  he  is  a  colored  Kentuckian  and 
must  honor  the  stable  customs  of  the  country. 
He  does  little  buying  or  selling ;  he  is  not  a 
politician  ;  he  has  no  debt  to  collect,  and  no 
legal  business.     Still,  example  is  powerful  and 

112 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

the  negro  imitative,  so  here  he  is  at  county- 
court.  It  is  one  instance  of  the  influence  ex- 
erted over  him  by  the  institutions  of  the  Ken- 
tuckian,  so  that  he  has  a  passion  for  fine  stock, 
must  build  amphitheatres  and  hold  fairs  and 
attend  races.  Naturally,  therefore,  county  court 
has  become  a  great  social  day  with  his  race. 
They  stop  work  and  come  in  from  the  country, 
or  from  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  where  they 
have  congregated  in  little  frame  houses,  and 
exhibit  a  quasi-activity  in  whatever  of  business 
and  pleasure  is  going  forward.  In  no  other 
position  of  life  does  he  exhibit  his  character 
and  his  condition  more  strikingly  than  here. 
Always  comical,  always  tragical,  light-hearted, 
sociable  ;  his  shackles  stricken  off,  but  wearing 
those  of  his  own  indolence,  ignorance,  and  help- 
lessness ;  the  wandering  Socrates  of  the  streets, 
always  dropping  little  shreds  of  observation  on 
human  affairs  and  bits  of  philosophy  on  human 
life ;  his  memory  working  with  last  Sunday's 
sermon,  and  his  hope  with  to-morrow's  bread  ; 
citizen,  with  so  much  freedom  and  so  little  lib- 
erty— the  negro  forms  one  of  the  conspicuous 
features  of  a  county  court  day  at  the  present 
time. 

A  wonderful,  wonderful  day  this  is  that  does 
thus  always  keep  pace  with  civilization  in  the 
State,  drawing  all  elements  to  itself,  and  por- 
H  113  . 


County  Court  Day  in  Kentucky 

traying  them  to  the  interpreting  eye.  So  that 
to  paint  the  scenes  of  the  county  court  days  in 
the  past  is  almost  to  write  the  history  of  the 
contemporary  periods  ;  and  to  do  as  much  with 
one  of  the  present  hour  is  to  depict  the  oldest 
influences  that  has  survived  and  the  newest 
that  has  been  born  in  this  local  environment. 
To  the  future  student  of  governmental  and 
institutional  history  in  this  country,  a  study 
always  interesting,  always  important,  and  al- 
ways unique,  will  be  county  court  day  in  Ken- 
tucky. 


KENTUCKY  FAIRS 


I 


THE  nineteenth  century  opened  gravely 
for  the  Kentuckians.  Little  akin  as  was 
the  spirit  of  the  people  to  that  of  the 
Puritans,  life  among  them  had  been  almost  as 
granitic  in  its  hardness  and  ruggedness  and 
desolate  unrelief.  The  only  thing  in  the  log- 
cabin  that  had  sung  from  morning  till  night 
was  the  spinning-wheel.  Not  much  behind 
those  women  but  danger,  anxiety,  vigils,  devas- 
tation, mournful  tragedies  ;  scarce  one  of  them 
but  might  fitly  have  gone  to  her  loom  and 
woven  herself  a  garment  of  sorrow.  Not  much 
behind  those  men  but  felling  of  trees,  clearing 
of  land,  raising  of  houses^  opening  of  roads,  dis- 
tressing problems  of  State,  desolating  wars  of 
the  republic.  Most  could  remember  the  time 
when  it  was  so  common  for  a  man  to  be  killed, 
that  to  lie  down  and  die  a  natural  death  seem- 
ed unnatural.  Many  must  have  had  in  their 
faces  the  sadness  that  was  in  the  face  of  Lin- 
coln. 

117 


Kentucky  Fairs 

Nevertheless,  from  the  first,  there  had  stood 
out  among  the  Kentuckians  broad  exhibitions 
of  exuberant  animal  vigor,  of  unbridled  animal 
spirits.  Some  singularly  and  faithfully  enough 
in  the  ancestral  vein  of  English  sports  and  re- 
laxations— dog-fighting  and  cock-fighting,  rifle 
target-shooting,  wrestling  matches,  foot-racing 
for  the  men,  and  quarter-racing  for  the  horses. 
Without  any  thought  of  making  spectacles  or 
of  becoming  themselves  a  spectacle  in  history, 
they  were  always  ready  to  form  an  impromptu 
arena  and  institute  athletic  games.  They  had 
even  their  gladiators.  Other  rude  pleasures 
were  more  characteristic  of  their  environment 
— the  log-rolling  and  the  quilting,  the  social 
frolic  of  the  harvesting,  the  merry  parties  of 
flax-pullers,  and  the  corn-husking  at  nightfall, 
when  the  men  divided  into  sides,  and  the  green 
glass  whiskey-bottle,  stopped  with  a  corn-cob, 
was  filled  and  refilled  and  passed  from  mouth 
to  mouth,  until  out  of  those  lusty  throats  rose 
and  swelled  a  rhythmic  choral  song  that  could 
be  heard  in  the  deep  woods  a  mile  or  more  away  : 
at  midnight  those  who  were  sober  took  home 
those  who  were  drunk.  But  of  course  none  of 
these  were  organized  amusements.  They  are 
not  instances  of  taking  pleasures  sadly,  but  of 
attempts  to  do  much  hard,  rough  work  with 
gladness.  Other  occasions,  also,  which  have 
ii8 


Kentucky  Fairs 

the  semblance  of  popular  joys,  and  which  cer- 
tainly were  not  passed  over  without  merriment 
and  turbulent,  disorderly  fun,  were  really  set 
apart  for  the  gravest  of  civic  and  political  rea- 
sons :  militia  musters,  stump-speakings,  county 
court  day  assemblages,  and  the  yearly  July  cele- 
brations. Still  other  pleasures  were  of  an  eco- 
nomic or  utilitarian  nature.  Thus  the  novel 
and  exciting  contests  by  parties  of  men  at  squir- 
rel-shooting looked  to  the  taking  of  that  de- 
structive animal's  scalp,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
skin  ;  the  hunting  of  beehives  in  the  woods  had 
some  regard  to  the  scarcity  of  sugar ;  and  the 
nut  gatherings  and  wild-grape  gatherings  by 
younger  folks  in  the  gorgeous  autumnal  days 
were  partly  in  memory  of  a  scant,  unvaried 
larder,  which  might  profitably  draw  upon  nat- 
ure's rich  and  salutary  hoard.  Perhaps  the 
dearest  pleasures  among  them  were  those  that 
lay  closest  to  their  dangers.  They  loved  the 
pursuit  of  marauding  parties,  the  solitary  chase ; 
were  always  ready  to  throw  away  axe  and  mat- 
tock for  rifle  and  knife.  Among  pleasures,  cer- 
tainly, should  be  mentioned  the  weddings.  For 
plain  reasons  these  were  commonly  held  in  the 
daytime.  Men  often  rode  to  them  armed,  and 
before  leaving  too  often  made  them  scenes  of 
carousal  and  unchastened  jocularities.  After 
the  wedding  came  the  "  infare,"  with  the  going 
119 


Kentucky  Fairs 

from  the  home  of  the  bride  to  the  home  of  the 
groom.  Above  everything  else  that  seems  to 
strike  the  chord  of  common  happiness  in  the 
society  of  the  time,  stands  out  to  the  imagi- 
nation the  picture  of  one  of  these  processions — 
a  long  bridal  cavalcade  winding  slowly  along  a 
narrow  road  through  the  silent,  primeval  forest, 
now  in  sunlight,  now  in  the  shadow  of  mighty 
trees  meeting  over  the  way ;  at  the  head  the 
young  lovers,  so  rudely  mounted,  so  simply 
dressed,  and,  following  in  their  happy  wake,  as 
though  they  were  the  augury  of  a  peaceful  era 
soon  to  come,  a  straggling,  broken  line  of  the 
men  and  women  who  had  prepared  for  that 
era,  but  should  never  live  to  see  its  appear- 
ing. 

Such  scenes  as  these  give  a  touch  of  bright, 
gay  color  to  the  dull  homespun  texture  of  the 
social  fabric  of  the  times.  Indeed,  when  all 
the  pleasures  have  been  enumerated,  they 
seem  a  good  many.  But  the  effect  of  such 
an  enumeration  is  misleading.  Life  remained 
tense,  sad,  barren  ;  character  moulded  itself 
on  a  model  of  Spartan  simplicity  and  hardi- 
hood, without  the  Spartan  treachery  and  cun- 
ning. 

But  from  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury things  grew  easier.  The  people,  rescued 
from  the  necessity  of  trying  to  be  safe,  began  to 
1 20 


Kentucky  Fairs 

indulge  the  luxury  of  wishing  to  be  happy. 
Life  ceased  to  be  a  warfare,  and  became 
an  industry ;  the  hand  left  off  defending, 
and  commenced  acquiring  ;  the  moulding 
of  bullets  was  succeeded  by  the  coining  of 
dollars. 


^t 


IT  is  against  the  background  of  such  a  strenu- 
ous past  that  we  find  the  Kentucky  fair 
first  projected  by  the  practical  and  pro- 
gressive spirit  that  ruled  among  the  Kentuck- 
ians  in  the  year  1816.  Nothing  could  have 
been  conceived  with  soberer  purpose,  or  worn 
less  the  aspect  of  a  great  popular  pleasure. 
Picture  the  scene  !  A  distinguished  soldier 
and  honored  gentleman,  with  a  taste  for  agri- 
culture and  fine  cattle,  has  announced  that  on 
a  certain  day  in  July  he  will  hold  on  his  farm  a 
"  Grand  Cattle  Show  and  Fair,  free  for  every- 
body." The  place  is  near  Lexington,  which 
was  then  the  centre  of  commerce  and  seat  of 
learning  in  the  West.  The  meagre  newspapers 
of  the  time  have  carried  the  tidings  to  every 
tavern  and  country  cross-roads.  It  is  a  novel 
undertaking ;  the  like  has  never  been  known 
this  side  of  the  Alleghanies.  The  summer 
morning  come,  you  may  see  a  very  remarkable 
company  of  gentlemen  :  old  pioneers,  Revolu- 
122 


Kentucky  Fairs 

tionary  soldiers,  volunteers  of  the  War  of  1812, 
walking  in  picturesque  twos  and  threes  out  of 
the  little  town  to  the  green  woods  where  the 
fair  is  to  be  held  ;  others  jogging  thitherward 
along  the  by  -  paths  and  newly  opened  roads 
through  the  forest,  clad  in  homespun  from  heel 
to  head,  and  mindful  of  the  cold  lunches  and 
whiskey-bottles  in  their  coat-pockets  or  saddle- 
bags ;  some,  perhaps,  drawn  thither  in  wagons 
and  aristocratic  gigs.  Once  arrived,  all  step- 
ping around  loftily  on  the  velvet  grass,  peering 
curiously  into  each  other's  eyes,  and  offering 
their  snuffboxes  for  a  sneeze  of  convivial  aston- 
ishment that  they  could  venture  to  meet  under 
the  clear  sky  for  such  an  undertaking.  The 
five  judges  of  the  fair,  coming  from  as  many 
different  counties,  the  greatest  personages  of 
their  day — one,  a  brilliant  judge  of  the  Federal 
Court  ;  the  second,  one  of  the  earliest  settlers, 
with  a  sword  hanging  up  at  home  to  show  how 
Virginia  appreciated  his  services  in  the  Revo- 
lution :  the  third,  a  soldier  and  blameless  gen- 
tleman of  the  old  school ;  the  fourth,  one  of  the 
few  early  Kentuckians  who  brought  into  the 
new  society  the  noble  style  of  country-place, 
with  park  and  deer,  that  would  have  done  credit 
to  an  English  lord  ;  and  the  fifth,  in  no  respect 
inferior  to  the  others.  These  "perform  the 
duties  assigned  them  with  assiduity,"  and  hand 
123 


Kentucky  Fairs 

over  to  their  neighbors  as  many  as  fifteen  or 
twenty  premium  silver  cups,  costing  twelve 
dollars  apiece.  After  which  the  assemblage 
variously  disperses — part  through  the  woods 
again,  while  part  return  to  town. 

Such,  then,  was  the  first  Kentucky  fair.  It 
was  a  transplantation  to  Kentucky,  not  of  the 
English  or  European  fair,  but  of  the  English 
cattle  -  show.  It  resembled  the  fair  only  in 
being  a  place  for  buying  and  selling.  And  it 
was  not  thought  of  in  the  light  of  a  merry- 
making or  great  popular  amusement.  It  seems 
not  even  to  have  taken  account  of  manufact- 
ures— then  so  important  an  industry — or  of 
agriculture. 

Like  the  first  was  the  second  fair  held  in  the 
same  place  the  year  following.  Of  this,  little 
is  and  little  need  be  known,  save  that  then  was 
formed  the  first  State  Agricultural  Society  of 
Kentucky,  which  also  was  the  first  in  the  West, 
and  the  second  in  the  United  States.  This  so- 
ciety held  two  or  three  annual  meetings,  and 
then  went  to  pieces,  but  not  before  laying 
down  the  broad  lines  on  which  the  fair  con- 
tinued to  be  held  for  the  next  quarter  of  a 
century.  That  is,  the  fair  began  as  a  cattle- 
show,  though  stock  of  other  kinds  was  ex- 
hibited. Then  it  was  extended  to  embrace 
agriculture ;  and  with  branches  of  good  h'us- 
124 


Kentucky  Fairs 

bandry  it  embraced  as  well  those  of  good 
housewifery.  Thus  at  the  early  fairs  one  finds 
the  farmers  contesting  for  premiums  with 
their  wheats  and  their  whiskeys,  while  their 
skilful  helpmates  displayed  the  products — the 
never -surpassed  products  —  of  their  looms  : 
linens,  cassinettes,  jeans,  and  carpetings. 

With  this  brief  outline  we  may  pass  over  the 
next  twenty  years.  The  current  of  State  life 
during  this  interval  ran  turbulent  and  stormy. 
Now  politics,  now  finance,  imbittered  and  dis- 
tressed the  people.  Time  and  again,  here  and 
there,  small  societies  revived  the  fair,  but  all 
efforts  to  expand  it  were  unavailing.  And  yet 
this  period  must  be  distinguished  as  the  one 
during  which  the  necessity  of  the  fair  became 
widely  recognized  ;  for  it  taught  the  Kentuck- 
ians  that  their  chief  interest  lay  in  the  soil, 
and  that  physical  nature  imposed  upon  them 
the  agricultural  type  of  life.  Grass  was  to  be 
their  portion  and  their  destiny.  It  taught 
them  the  insulation  of  their  habitat,  and  the 
need  of  looking  within  their  own  society  for 
the  germs  and  laws  of  their  development.  As 
soon  as  the  people  came  to  sec  that  they  were 
to  be  a  race  of  farmers,  it  is  important  to  note 
their  concern  that,  as  such,  they  should  be 
hedged  with  respectability.  They  took  high 
ground  about  it ;  they  would  not  cease  to  be 
125 


Kentucky  Fairs 

gentlemen ;  they  would  have  their  class  well  re- 
puted for  fat  pastures  and  comfortable  homes, 
but  honored  as  well  for  manners  and  liberal  in- 
telligence. And  to  this  end  they  had  recourse 
to  an  agricultural  literature.  Thus,  when  the 
fair  began  to  revive,  with  happier  auspices, 
near  the  close  of  the  period  under  consider- 
ation, they  signalized  it  for  nearly  the  quarter 
of  a  century  afterwards  by  instituting  literary 
contests.  Prizes  and  medals  were  offered  for 
discoveries  and  inventions  which  should  be  of 
interest  to  the  Kentucky  agriculturist ;  and 
hundreds  of  dollars  were  appropriated  for  the 
victors  and  the  second  victors  in  the  writing 
of  essays  which  should  help  the  farmer  to  be- 
come a  scientist  and  not  to  forget  to  remain  a 
gentleman.  In  addition,  they  sometimes  sat 
for  hours  in  the  open  air  while  some  eminent 
citizen — the  Governor,  if  possible — delivered 
an  address  to  commemorate  the  opening  of 
the  fair,  and  to  review  the  progress  of  agri- 
cultural life  in  the  commonwealth.  But  there 
were  many  anti-literarians  among  them,  who 
conceived  a  sort  of  organized  hostility  to  what 
they  aspersed  as  book  -  farming,  and  on  that 
account  withheld  their  cordial  support. 


HI 


IT  was  not  until  about  the  year  1840  that  the 
fair  began  to  touch  the  heart  of  the  whole 
people.  Before  this  time  there  had  been 
no  amphitheatre,  no  music,  no  booths,  no  side- 
shows, no  ladies.  A  fair  without  ladies  !  How 
could  the  people  love  it,  or  ever  come  to  look 
upon  it  as  their  greatest  annual  occasion  for 
love-making  ? 

An  interesting  commentary  on  the  social 
decorum  of  this  period  is  furnished  in  the  fact 
that  for  some  twenty  years  after  the  institu- 
tion of  the  fair  no  woman  put  her  foot  upon 
the  ground.  She  was  thought  a  bold  woman, 
doing  a  bold  deed,  who  one  day  took  a  friend 
and,  under  the  escort  of  gentlemen,  drove  in 
her  own  carriage  to  witness  the  showing  of  her 
own  fat  cattle ;  for  she  was  herself  one  of  the 
most  practical  and  successful  of  Kentucky 
farmers.  But  where  one  of  the  sex  has  been, 
may  not  all  the  sex  —  may  not  all  the  world 
— safely  follow  ?  From  the  date  of  this  event, 
127 


Kentucky  Fairs 

and  the  appearance  of  women  on  the  grounds, 
the  tide  of  popular  favor  set  in  steadily  tow- 
ards the  fair. 

For,  as  an  immediate  consequence,  seats 
must  be  provided.  Here  one  happens  upon  a 
curious  bit  of  local  history — the  evolution  of 
the  amphitheatre  among  the  Kentuckians.  At 
the  earliest  fairs  the  first  form  of  the  amphi- 
theatre had  been  a  rope  stretched  from  tree  to 
tree,  while  the  spectators  stood  around  on  the 
outside,  or  sat  on  the  grass  or  in  their  vehicles. 
The  immediate  result  of  the  necessity  for  pro- 
viding comfortable  seats  for  the  now  increasing 
crowd,  was  to  select  as  a  place  for  holding  the 
fair  such  a  site  as  the  ancient  Greeks  might 
have  chosen  for  building  a  theatre.  Sometimes 
this  was  the  head  of  a  deep  ravine,  around  the 
sides  of  which  seats  were  constructed,  while  the 
bottom  below  served  as  the  arena  for  the  ex- 
hibition of  the  stock,  which  was  led  in  and  out 
through  the  mouth  of  the  hollow.  At  other 
times  advantage  was  taken  of  a  natural  sink 
and  semicircular  hill  -  side.  The  slope  was 
sodded  and  terraced  with  rows  of  seats,  and 
the  spectators  looked  down  upon  the  circular 
basin  at  the  bottom.  But  clearly  enough  the 
sun  played  havoc  with  the  complexions  of  the 
ladies,  and  a  sudden  drenching  shower  was  still 
one  of  the  uncomfortable  dispensations  of  Prov- 
128 


Kentucky  Fairs 

idence.  Therefore  a  roofed  wooden  structure 
of  temporary  seats  made  its  appearance,  de- 
signed after  the  fashion  of  those  used  by  the 
travelling  show,  and  finally  out  of  this  form 
came  the  closed  circular  amphitheatre,  mod- 
elled on  the  plan  of  the  Colosseum.  Thus  first 
among  the  Kentuckians,  if  I  mistake  not,  one 
saw  the  English  cattle-show,  which  meantime 
was  gathering  about  itself  many  characteristics 
of  the  English  fair,  wedded  strangely  enough 
to  the  temple  of  a  Roman  holiday.  By-and-by 
we  shall  see  this  form  of  amphitheatre  torn 
down  and  supplanted  by  another,  which  recalls 
the  ancient  circle  or  race-course — a  modifica- 
tion corresponding  with  a  change  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  later  fair. 

The  most  desirable  spot  for  building  the  old 
circular  amphitheatre  was  some  beautiful  tract 
of  level  ground  containing  from  five  to  twenty 
acres,  and  situated  near  a  flourishing  town  and 
its  ramifying  turnpikes.  This  track  must  be 
enclosed  by  a  high  wooden  paling,  with  here 
and  there  entrance  gates  for  stock  and  pedes- 
trians and  vehicles,  guarded  by  gate-keepers. 
And  within  this  enclosure  appeared  in  quick 
succession  all  the  varied  accessories  that  went 
to  make  up  a  typical  Kentucky  fair  near  the 
close  of  the  old  social  regime ;  that  is,  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War. 
I  129 


Kentucky  Fairs 

Here  were  found  the  hundreds  of  neat  stalls 
for  the  different  kinds  of  stock  ;  the  gay  booths 
under  the  colonnade  of  the  amphitheatre  for 
refreshments ;  the  spacious  cottages  for  wom- 
en and  invalids  and  children  ;  the  platforms  of 
the  quack  -  doctors ;  the  floral  hall  and  the 
pagoda  -  like  structure  for  the  musicians  and 
the  judges ;  the  tables  and  seats  for  private  din- 
ing ;  the  high  swings  and  the  turnabouts  ;  the 
tests  of  the  strength  of  limb  and  lung ;  the 
gaudy  awnings  for  the  lemonade  venders  ;  the 
huge  brown  hogsheads  for  iced  -  water,  with 
bright  tin  cups  dangling  from  the  rim  ;  the 
circus  ;  and,  finally,  all  those  tented  spectacles 
of  the  marvellous,  the  mysterious,  and  the 
monstrous  which  were  to  draw  popular  atten- 
tion to  the  Kentucky  fair,  as  they  had  been 
the  particular  delight  of  the  fair-going  thou- 
sands in  England  hundreds  of  years  before. 

For  you  will  remember  that  the  Kentucky 
fair  has  ceased  by  this  time  to  be  a  cattle- 
show.  It  has  ceased  to  be  simply  a  place  for 
the  annual  competitive  exhibition  of  stock 
of  all  kinds,  which,  by-the-way,  is  beginning  to 
make  the  country  famous.  It  has  ceased  to  be 
even  the  harvest-home  of  the  Blue-grass  Re- 
gion, the  mild  autumnal  saturnalia  of  its  rural 
population.  Whatever  the  people  can  discover 
or  invent  is  indeed  here ;  or  whatever  they 
130 


Kentucky  Fairs 

own,  or  can  produce  from  the  bountiful  earth, 
or  take  from  orchard  or  flower-garden,  or  make 
in  dairy,  kitchen,  or  loom-room.  But  the  fair 
is  more  than  all  this  now.  It  has  become  the 
great  yearly  pleasure-ground  of  the  people  as- 
sembled for  a  week's  festivities.  It  is  what  the 
European  fair  of  old  was — the  season  of  the 
happiest  and  most  general  intercourse  between 
country  and  town.  Here  the  characteristic 
virtues  and  vices  of  the  local  civilization  will 
be  found  in  open  flower  side  by  side,  and  types 
and  manners  painted  to  the  eye  in  vividest 
colorings. 

Crowded  picture  of  a  time  gone  by  !  Bright 
glancing  pageantry  of  life,  moving  on  with 
feasting  and  music  and  love  -  making  to  the 
very  edge  of  the  awful  precipice,  over  which 
its  social  system  and  its  richly  nurtured  ideals 
will  be  dashed  to  pieces  below  ! — why  not  pause 
an  instant  over  its  innocent  mirth  and  quick, 
awful  tragedies  ? 


IV 


THE  fair  has  been  in  progress  several  days, 
and  this  will  be  the  greatest  day  of  all : 
nothing  shown  from  morning  till  night 
but  horses — horses  in  harness,  horses  under  the 
saddle.  Ah  !  but  that  will  be  worth  seeing ! 
Late  in  the  afternoon  the  little  boys  will  ride 
for  premiums  on  their  ponies,  and,  what  is  not 
so  pretty,  but  far  more  exciting,  young  men 
will  contest  the  prize  of  horsemanship.  And 
then  such  racking  and  pacing  and  loping  and 
walking  ! — such  racing  round  and  round  and 
round  to  see  who  can  go  fastest,  and  be  grace- 
fulest,  and  turn  quickest !  Such  pirouetting 
and  curveting  and  prancing  and  cavorting  and 
riding  with  arms  folded  across  the  breast  while 
the  reins  lie  on  the  horse's  neck,  and  suddenly 
bowing  over  to  the  horse's  mane,  as  some  queen 
of  beauty  high  up  in  the  amphitheatre,  trans- 
ported by  the  excitement  of  the  thousands  of 
spectators  and  the  closeness  of  the  contest, 
throws  her  flowers  and  handkerchief  down 
132 


I*'  ' 

»   •    »• 


Kentucky  Fairs 

into  the  arena  !  Ah,  yes !  this  will  be  the 
great  day  at  the  fair — at  the  modern  tourney  ! 

So  the  tide  of  the  people  is  at  the  flood.  For 
days  they  have  been  pouring  into  the  town. 
The  hotels  are  overflowing  with  strangers  ;  the 
open  houses  of  the  citizens  are  full  of  guests. 
Strolling  companies  of  players  will  crack  the 
dusty  boards  to-night  with  the  tread  of  buskin 
and  cothurnus.  The  easy-going  tradespeople 
have  trimmed  their  shops,  and  imported  from 
the  North  their  richest  merchandise. 

From  an  early  hour  of  the  morning,  along 
every  road  that  leads  from  country  or  town  to 
the  amphitheatre,  pour  the  hurrying  throng  of 
people,  eager  to  get  good  seats  for  the  day ; 
for  there  will  be  thousands  not  seated  at  all. 
Streaming  out,  on  the  side  of  the  town,  are  pe- 
destrians, hacks,  omnibuses,  the  negro  drivers 
shouting,  racing,  cracking  their  whips,  and 
sometimes  running  into  the  way  -  side  stands 
where  old  negro  women  are  selling  apples  and 
gingerbread.  Streaming  in,  on  the  side  of  the 
country,  are  pedestrians,  heated,  their  coats 
thrown  over  the  shoulder  or  the  arm  ;  buggies 
containing  often  a  pair  of  lovers  who  do  not 
keep  their  secret  discreetly;  family  carriages 
with  children  made  conspicuously  tidy  and 
mothers  aglow  with  the  recent  labors  of  the 
kitchen :  comfortable  evidences  of  which  are 
133 


Kentucky  Fairs 

the  huge  baskets  or  hampers  that  are  piled  up 
in  front  or  strapped  on  behind.  Nay,  some- 
times may  be  seen  whole  wagon-loads  of  pro- 
visions moving  slowly  in,  guarded  by  portly 
negresses,  whose  eyes  shine  like  black  diamonds 
through  the  setting  of  their  white-dusted  eye- 
lashes. 

Within  the  grounds,  how  rapidly  the  crowd 
swells  and  surges  hither  and  thither,  tasting 
the  pleasures  of  the  place  before  going  to  the 
amphitheatre  :  to  the  stalls,  to  the  booths,  to 
the  swings,  to  the  cottage,  to  the  floral  hall,  to 
the  living  curiosities,  to  the  swinish  pundits, 
who  have  learned  their  lessons  in  numbers 
and  cards.  Is  not  that  the  same  pig  that  was 
shown  at  Bartholomew's  four  centuries  ago  ? 
Mixed  in  with  the  Kentuckians  are  people  of  a 
different  build  and  complexion.  For  Kentucky 
now  is  one  of  the  great  summering  States  for 
the  extreme  Southerners,  who  come  up  with 
their  families  to  its  watering-places.  Others 
who  are  scattered  over  the  North  return  in  the 
autumn  by  way  of  Kentucky,  remaining  till 
the  fair  and  the  fall  of  the  first  frost.  Nay,  is 
not  the  State  the  place  for  the  reunion  of  fam- 
ilies that  have  Southern  members?  Back  to 
the  old  home  from  the  rice  and  sugar  and  cot- 
ton plantations  of  the  swamps  and  the  bayous 
come  young  Kentucky  wives  with  Southern 
134 


Kentucky  Fairs 

husbands,  young  Kentucky  husbands  with 
Southern  wives.  All  these  are  at  the  fair — 
the  Lexington  fair.  Here,  too,  are  strangers 
from  wellnigh  every  Northern  State.  And,  I 
beg  you,  do  not  overlook  the  negroes — a  solid 
acre  of  them.  They  play  unconsciously  a  great 
part  in  the  essential  history  of  this  scene  and 
festival.  Briskly  grooming  the  stock  in  the 
stalls  ;  strolling  around  with  carriage  whips  in 
their  hands ;  running  on  distant  errands ; 
showering  a  tumult  of  blows  upon  the  newly 
arrived  "boss"  with  their  nimble,  ubiquitous 
brush-brooms ;  everywhere,  everywhere,  happy, 
well-dressed,  sleek — the  fateful  background  of 
all  this  stage  of  social  history. 

But  the  amphitheatre  !  Through  the  mild, 
chastened,  soft-toned  atmosphere  of  the  early 
September  day  the  sunlight  falls  from  the  un- 
clouded sky  upon  the  seated  thousands.  Ah, 
the  women  in  all  their  silken  and  satin  bravery  ! 
delicate  blue  and  pink  and  canary  -  colored 
petticoats,  with  muslin  over-dresses,  black  lace 
and  white  lace  mantles,  white  kid  gloves,  and 
boots  to  match  the  color  of  their  petticoats. 
One  stands  up  to  allow  a  lemonade-seller  to 
pass ;  she  wears  a  hoop-skirt  twelve  feet  in 
circumference.  Here  and  there  costumes 
suitable  for  a  ball ;  arms  and  shoulders  glisten- 
ing like  marble  in  the  sunlight ;  gold  chains 
135 


Kentucky  Fairs 

around  the  delicate  arching  necks.  Oh,  the 
jewels,  the  flowers,  the  fans,  the  parasols,  the 
ribbons,  the  soft  eyes  and  smiles,  the  love  and 
happiness  !  And  some  of  the  complexions  ! — 
paint  on  the  cheeks,  powder  on  the  neck,  stick- 
pomatum  plastering  the  beautiful  hair  down 
over  the  temples.  No  matter  ;  it  is  the  fashion. 
Rub  it  in  !  Rub  it  in  well— up  to  the  very- 
roots  of  the  hair  and  eyebrows !  Now,  how 
perfect  you  are,  madam  !  You  are  the  great 
Kentucky  show  of  life-size  wax-works. 

In  another  part  of  the  amphitheatre  noth- 
ing but  men,  red-faced,  excited,  standing  up 
on  the  seats,  shouting,  applauding,  as  the  ri- 
val horses  rush  round  the  ring  before  them. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  know  who  these  are.  The 
money  streams  through  their  fingers.  Did 
you  hear  the  crack  of  that  pistol  ?  How  the 
crowd  swarms  angrily.  Stand  back  !  A  man 
has  been  shot.  He  insulted  a  gentleman.  He 
called  him  a  liar.  Be  careful.  There  are  a 
great  many  pistols  on  the  fair  grounds. 

In  all  the  United  States  where  else  is  there 
to  be  seen  any  such  holiday  assemblage  of 
people — any  such  expression  of  the  national 
life  impressed  with  local  peculiarities?  Where 
else  is  there  to  be  seen  anything  that,  while  it 
falls  far  behind,  approaches  so  near  the  spirit 
of  uproarious  merriment,  of  reckless  fun,  which 
136 


Kentucky  Fairs 

used  to  intoxicate  and  madden  the  English 
populace  when  given  over  to  the  sports  of  a 
ruder  age  ? 

These  are  the  descendants  of  the  sad  pio- 
neers—  of  those  eady  cavalcades  which  we 
glanced  at  in  the  primeval  forests  a  few  min- 
utes ago.  These  have  subdued  the  land,  and 
are  reclining  on  its  tranquil  autumn  fulness. 
Time  enough  to  play  now — more  time  than 
there  ever  was  before ;  more  than  there  will 
ever  be  again.  They  have  established  their 
great  fair  here  on  the  very  spot  where  their 
forefathers  were  massacred  or  put  to  torture. 
So,  at  old  Smithfield,  the  tumblers,  the  jesters, 
the  buffoons,  and  the  dancers  shouldered  each 
other  in  joyful  riot  over  the  ashes  of  the  earlier 
heroes  and  martyrs. 

It  is  past  high  noon,  and  the  thousands 
break  away  from  the  amphitheatre  and  move 
towards  a  soft  green  woodland  in  another  part 
of  the  grounds,  shaded  by  forest  trees.  Here 
are  the  private  dinner  -  tables  —  hundreds  of 
them,  covered  with  snowy  linen,  glittering 
with  glass  and  silver.  You  have  heard  of 
Kentucky  hospitality  ;  here  you  will  see  one 
of  the  peaceful  battle-fields  where  reputation 
for  that  virtue  is  fought  for  and  won.  Is  there 
a  stranger  among  these  thousands  that  has 
not  been  hunted  up  and  provided  for  ?  And 
137 


Kentucky  Fairs 

such  dinners !  Old  Pepys  should  be  here — 
immortal  eater — so  that  he  could  go  home  and 
set  down  in  his  diary,  along  with  other  gastro- 
nomic adventures,  garrulous  notes  of  what  he 
saw  eaten  and  ate  himself  at  the  Kentucky 
fair.  You  will  never  see  the  Kentuckians 
making  a  better  show  than  at  this  moment. 
What  courtesy,  what  good-will,  what  warm  and 
gracious  manners  !  Tie  a  blue  ribbon  on  them. 
In  a  competitive  exhibition  of  this  kind  the 
premium  will  stay  at  home. 

But  make  the  most  of  it— make  the  most  of 
this  harmony.  For  did  you  see  that?  A 
father  and  a  son  met  each  other,  turned  their 
heads  quickly  and  angrily  away,  and  passed 
without  speaking. 

Look  how  these  two  men  shake  hands  with 
too  much  cordiality,  and  search  each  other's 
eyes.  There  is  a  man  from  the  North  stand- 
ing apart  and  watching  with  astonishment 
these  alert,  happy,  efficient  negroes — perhaps 
following  with  his  thoughtful  gaze  one  of  Mrs. 
Stowe's  Uncle  Toms.  A  Southerner  has  drawn 
that  Kentucky  farmer  beside  a  tree,  and  is 
trying  to  buy  one  of  these  servants  for  his 
plantation.  Yes,  yes,  make  the  most  of  it ! 
The  war  is  coming.  It  is  in  men's  hearts,  and 
in  their  eyes  and  consciences.  By-and-by  this 
bright,  gay  pageant  will  pass  so  entirely  away 
138 


Kentucky  Fairs 

that  even  the  thought  of  it  will  come  back  to 
one  like  the  unsubstantial  revelry  of  a  dream. 
By-and-by  there  will  be  another  throng  filling 
these  grounds  :  not  in  pink  and  white  and 
canary,  but  in  blue,  solid  blue — blue  overcoats, 
showing  sad  and  cold  above  the  snow.  All 
round  the  amphitheatre  tents  will  be  spread — 
not  covering,  as  now,  the  hideous  and  the  mon- 
strous, but  the  sleeping  forms  of  young  men, 
athletic,  sinewy,  beautiful.  This,  too,  shall 
vanish.  And  some  day,  when  the  fierce  sum- 
mer sun  is  killing  the  little  gray  leaves  and 
blades  of  grass,  in  through  these  deserted 
gates  will  pass  a  long,  weary,  foot-sore  line  of 
brown.  Nothing  in  the  floral  hall  now  but 
cots,  around  which  are  nurses  and  weeping 
women.  Lying  there,  some  poor  young  fellow, 
with  the  death  dew  on  his  forehead,  will  open 
his  shadowy  eyes  and  remember  this  day  of 
the  fair,  where  he  walked  among  the  flowers 
and  made  love. 

But  it  is  late  in  the  afternoon,  and  the  peo- 
ple are  beginning  to  disperse  by  turnpike  and 
lane  to  their  homes  in  the  country,  or  to 
hasten  back  into  town  for  the  festivities  of 
the  night;  for  to-night  the  spirit  of  the  fair 
will  be  continued  in  other  amphitheatres.  To- 
night comedy  and  tragedy  will  tread  the  vil- 
lage boards ;  but  hand  in  hand  also  they  will 
139 


Kentucky  Fairs 

flaunt  their  colors  through  the  streets,  and 
haunt  the  midnight  alleys.  In  all  the  year  no 
time  like  fair-time :  parties  at  private  houses  ; 
hops,  balls  at  the  hotels.  You  shall  sip  the 
foam  from  the  very  crest  of  the  wave  of  revelry 
and  carousal.  Darkness  be  over  it  till  the  east 
reddens !     Let  Bacchus  be  unconfined ! 


THE  fair  languished  during  the  war,  but 
the  people  were  not  slow  to  revive  it 
upon  the  return  of  peace.  Peace,  how- 
ever, could  never  bring  back  the  fair  of  the 
past :  it  was  gone  forever — gone  with  the  stage 
and  phase  of  the  social  evolution  of  which  it 
was  the  unique  and  memorable  expression. 
For  there  was  no  phase  of  social  evolution  in 
Kentucky  but  felt  profoundly  that  era  of  up- 
heaval, drift,  and  readjustment.  Start  where 
we  will,  or  end  where  we  may,  we  shall  always 
come  sooner  or  later  to  the  war  as  a  great  rent 
and  chasm,  with  its  hither  side  and  its  farther 
side  and  its  deep  abyss  between,  down  into 
which  old  things  were  dashed  to  death,  and  out 
of  which  new  things  were  born  into  the  better 
life. 

Therefore,  as  we  study  the  Kentucky  fair  of 

to-day,  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  later, 

we    must    expect  to    find    it   much   changed. 

Withal  it  has  many  local  variations.     As  it  is 

141 


Kentucky  Fairs 

held  here  and  there  in  retired  counties  or  by 
little  neighborhoods  it  has  characteristics  of 
rural  picturesqueness  that  suggest  the  manners 
of  the  era  passed  away.  But  the  typical  Ken- 
tucky fair,  the  fair  that  represents  the  leading 
interests  and  advanced  ideas  of  the  day,  bears 
testimony  enough  to  the  altered  life  of  the 
people. 

The  old  circular  amphitheatre  has  been  torn 
down,  and  replaced  with  a  straight  or  a  slightly 
curved  bank  of  seats.  Thus  we  see  the  arena 
turned  into  the  race-course,  the  idea  of  the 
Colosseum  giving  way  to  the  idea  of  the  Circus 
Maximus.  In  front  of  the  bank  of  seats  stretch 
a  small  track  for  the  exhibition  of  different 
kinds  of  stock,  and  a  large  track  for  the  races. 
This  abandonment  of  the  old  form  of  amphi- 
theatre is  thus  a  significant  concession  to  the 
trotting-horse,  and  a  sign  that  its  speed  has 
become  the  great  pleasure  of  the  fair. 

As  a  picture,  also,  the  fair  of  to-day  lacks  the 
Tyrolean  brightness  of  its  predecessors  ;  and 
as  a  social  event  it  seems  like  a  pensive  tale 
of  by -gone  merriment.  Society  no  longer 
looks  upon  it  as  the  occasion  of  displaying 
its  wealth,  its  toilets,  its  courtesies,  its  hospi- 
talities. No  such  gay  and  splendid  dresses 
now  ;  no  such  hundreds  of  dinner-tables  on  the 
shaded  greensward.  It  would  be  too  much  to 
142 


Kentucky  Fairs 

say  that  the  disappearance  of  the  latter  be- 
tokens the  loss  of  that  virtue  which  the  gra- 
cious usages  of  a  former  time  made  a  byword. 
The  explanation  lies  elsewhere.  Under  the  old 
social  regime  a  common  appurtenance  to  every 
well-established  household  was  a  trained  force 
of  negro  servants.  It  was  the  services  of  these 
that  made  the  exercise  of  generous  public  en- 
tertainment possible  to  the  Kentucky  house- 
wife. Moreover,  the  lavish  ideals  of  the  time 
threw  upon  economy  the  reproach  of  mean- 
ness ;  and,  as  has  been  noted,  the  fair  was  then 
the  universally  recognized  time  for  the  dis- 
play of  munificent  competitive  hospitalities.  In 
truth,  it  was  the  sharpness  of  the  competition 
that  brought  in  at  last  the  general  disuse  of  the 
custom  ;  for  the  dinners  grew  more  and  more 
sumptuous,  the  labor  of  preparing  them  more 
and  more  severe,  and  the  expense  of  paying 
for  them  more  and  more  burdensome.  So  to- 
day the  Kentuckians  remain  a  hospitable  peo- 
ple, but  you  must  not  look  to  find  the  noblest 
exercise  of  their  hospitality  at  the  fair.  A  few 
dinners  you  will  see,  but  modest  luncheons  are 
not  despicable,  and  the  whole  tendency  of 
things  is  towards  the  understanding  that  an 
appetite  is  an  affair  of  the  private  conscience. 
And  this  brings  to  light  some  striking  differ- 
ences between  the  old  and  the  new  Kentuck- 
143 


Kentucky  Fairs 

ians.  Along  with  the  circular  amphitheatre, 
the  dresses,  and  the  dinners,  have  gone  the 
miscellaneous  amusements  of  which  the  fair 
was  erewhile  the  mongrel  scene  and  centre. 
The  ideal  fair  of  to-day  frowns  upon  the  side- 
show, and  discards  every  floating  accessory. 
It  would  be  self-sufficient.  It  would  say  to 
the  thousands  of  people  who  still  attend  it  as 
the  greatest  of  all  their  organized  pleasures, 
"  Find  your  excitement,  your  relaxation,  your 
happiness,  in  a  shed  for  machinery,  a  floral 
hall,  and  the  fine  stock."  But  of  these  the 
greatest  attraction  is  the  last,  and  of  all  kinds 
of  stock  the  one  most  honored  is  the  horse. 
Here,  then,  we  come  upon  a  noteworthy  fact : 
the  Kentucky  fair,  which  began  as  a  cattle-show, 
seems  likely  to  end  with  being  a  horse-show. 

If  anything  is  lacking  to  complete  the  con- 
trast between  the  fair  in  the  fulness  of  its 
development  before  the  war  and  the  fair  of 
to-day,  what  better  could  be  found  to  reflect 
this  than  the  different  morale  of  the  crowd  ? 

You  are  a  stranger,  and  you  have  the  im- 
pression that  an  assemblage  of  ten,  fifteen, 
twenty  thousand  Kentuckians  out  on  a  holi- 
day is  pervaded  by  the  spirit  of  a  mob.  You 
think  that  a  few  broken  heads  is  one  of  its 
cherished  traditions ;  that  intoxication  and 
disorderliness  are  its  dearest  prerogatives.  But 
144 


Kentucky  Fairs 

nowadays  you  look  in  vain  for  those  heated, 
excited  men  with  money  lying  between  their 
fingers,  who  were  once  the  rebuke  and  the 
terror  of  the  amphitheatre.  You  look  in  vain 
for  heated,  excited  men  of  any  kind  :  there 
are  none.  There  is  no  drinking,  no  bullying, 
no  elbowing,  or  shouldering,  or  swearing. 

While  still  in  their  nurses*  arms  you  may 
sometimes  see  the  young  Kentuckians  shown 
in  the  ring  at  the  horse-fair  for  premiums. 
From  their  early  years  they  are  taken  to  the 
amphitheatre  to  enjoy  its  color,  its  fleetness, 
and  its  form.  As  little  boys  they  ride  for 
prizes.  The  horse  is  the  subject  of  talk  in  the 
hotels,  on  the  street  corners,  in  the  saloons, 
at  the  stables,  on  county  court  day,  at  the 
cross-roads  and  blacksmiths'  shops,  in  country 
church-yards  before  the  sermon.  The  barber, 
as  he  shaves  his  morning  customer,  gives  him 
points  on  the  races.  There  will  be  found  many 
a  group  of  gentlemen  in  whose  presence  to 
reveal  an  ignorance  of  famous  horses  and  com- 
mon pedigrees  will  bring  a  blush  to  the  cheek. 
Not  to  feel  interested  in  such  themes  is  to  lay 
one's  self  open  to  a  charge  of  disagreeable  ec- 
centricity. The  horse  has  gradually  emerged 
into  prominence  until  to-day  it  occupies  the 
foreground. 

K  145 


A  HOME  OF  THE  SILENT  BROTHER- 
HOOD 


M 


I 


ORE  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
have  passed  since  the  Cardinal  de 
Richelieu  stood  at  the  baptismal  font 
as  sponsor  to  a  name  that  within  the  pale  of 
the  Church  was  destined  to  become  more  fa- 
mous than  his  own.  But  the  world  has  well- 
nigh  forgotten  Richelieu's  godson.  Only  the 
tireless  student  of  biography  now  turns  the 
pages  that  record  his  extraordinary  career, 
ponders  the  strange  unfolding  of  his  moral 
nature,  is  moved  by  the  deep  pathos  of  his 
dying  hours.  Dominique  Armand  -  Jean  Le 
Bouthillier  de  Ranc^!  How  cleverly,  while 
scarcely  out  of  short  -  clothes,  did  he  puzzle 
the  king's  confessor  with  questions  on  Homer, 
and  at  the  age  of  thirteen  publish  an  edition 
of  Anacreon  !  Of  ancient,  illustrious  birth, 
and  heir  to  an  almost  ducal  house,  how  ten- 
derly favored  was  he  by  Marie  de  Medicis  ; 
happy  -  hearted,  kindly,  suasive,  how  idolized 
by  a  gorgeous  court !  In  what  affluence  of 
149 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

rich  laces  did  he  dress ;  in  what  irresistible 
violet  -  colored  close  coats,  with  emeralds  at 
his  wristbands,  a  diamond  on  his  finger,  red 
heels  on  his  shoes  !  How  nimbly  he  capered 
through  the  dance  with  a  sword  on  his  hip  ! 
How  bravely  he  planned  quests  after  the  man- 
ner of  knights  of  the  Round  Table,  meaning 
to  take  for  himself  the  part  of  Lancelot !  How 
exquisitely,  ardently,  and  ah  !  how  fatally  he 
flirted  with  the  incomparable  ladies  in  the  cir- 
cle of  Madame  de  Rambouillet !  And  with  a 
zest  for  sport  as  great  as  his  unction  for  the 
priestly  office,  how  wittily  —  laying  one  hand 
on  his  heart  and  waving  the  other  through  the 
air — could  he  bow  and  say,  "  This  morning  I 
preached  like  an  angel ;  I'll  hunt  like  the  devil 
this  afternoon  !" 

All  at  once  his  life  broke  in  two  when  half 
spent.  He  ceased  to  hunt  like  the  devil,  to 
adore  the  flesh,  to  scandalize  the  world  ;  and 
retiring  to  the  ancient  Abbey  of  La  Trappe  in 
Normandy  —  the  sponsorial  gift  of  his  Emi- 
nence and  favored  by  many  popes — there  un- 
dertook the  difficult  task  of  reforming  the  re- 
laxed Benedictines.  The  old  abbey — situated 
in  a  great  fog-covered  basin  encompassed  by 
dense  woods  of  beech,  oak,  and  linden,  and 
therefore  gloomy,  unhealthy,  and  forbidding 
— was  in  ruins.  One  ascended  by  means  of  a 
150 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

ladder  from  floor  to  rotting  floor.  The  refec- 
tory had  become  a  place  where  the  monks 
assembled  to  play  at  bowls  with  worldlings. 
The  dormitory,  exposed  to  wind,  rain,  and  snow, 
had  been  given  up  to  owls.  In  the  church  the 
stones  were  scattered,  the  walls  unsteady,  the 
pavement  was  broken,  the  bell  ready  to  fall. 
As  a  single  solemn  reminder  of  the  vanished 
spirit  of  the  place,  which  had  been  founded  by 
St.  Stephen  and  St.  Bernard  in  the  twelfth 
century,  with  the  intention  of  reviving  in 
the  Western  Church  the  bright  examples  of 
primitive  sanctity  furnished  by  Eastern  sol- 
itaries of  the  third  and  fourth,  one  read  over 
the  door  of  the  cloister  the  words  of  Jeremiah  : 
^'  Sedebit  solitarius  et  tacebity  The  few  monks 
who  remained  in  the  convent  slept  where  they 
could,  and  were,  as  Chateaubriand  says,  in  a 
state  of  ruins.  They  preferred  sipping  ratafia 
to  reading  their  breviaries ;  and  when  De 
Ranee  undertook  to  enforce  reform,  they 
threatened  to  whip  him  for  his  pains.  He, 
in  turn,  threatened  them  with  the  royal  inter- 
ference, and  they  submitted.  There,  accord- 
ingly, he  introduced  a  system  of  rules  that  a 
sybarite  might  have  wept  over  even  to  hear 
recited ;  carried  into  practice  cenobitical  aus- 
terities that  recalled  the  models  of  pious  anch- 
orities  in  Syria  and  Thebais ;  and  gave  its 
151 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

peculiar  meaning  to  the  word  "Trappist,"  a 
name  which  has  since  been  taken  by  all  Cis- 
tercian communities  embracing  the  reform  of 
the  first  monastery. 

In  the  retirement  of  this  mass  of  woods  and 
sky  De  Ranc6  passed  the  rest  of  his  long  life, 
doing  nothing  more  worldly,  so  far  as  is  now 
known,  than  quoting  Aristophanes  and  Horace 
to  Bossuet,  and  allowing  himself  to  be  enter- 
tained by  Pellisson,  exhibiting  the  accomplish- 
ments of  his  educated  spider.  There,  in  acute 
agony  of  body  and  perfect  meekness  of  spirit, 
a  worn  and  weary  old  man,  with  time  enough 
to  remember  his  youthful  ardors  and  emeralds 
and  illusions,  he  watched  his  mortal  end  draw 
slowly  near.  And  there,  asking  to  be  buried 
in  some  desolate  spot — some  old  battle-field — 
he  died  at  last,  extending  his  poor  macerated 
body  on  the  cross  of  blessed  cinders  and  straw, 
and  commending  his  poor  penitent  soul  to  the 
mercy  of  Heaven. 

A  wonderful  spectacle  to  the  less  fervid 
Benedictines  of  the  closing  seventeenth  cen- 
tury must  have  seemed  the  work  of  De  Ranc6 
in  that  old  Norman  abbey  !  A  strange  com- 
pany of  human  souls,  attracted  by  the  former 
distinction  of  the  great  abbot  as  well  as  by  the 
peculiar  vows  of  the  institute,  must  have  come 
together  in  its  silent  halls !  One  hears  many 
152 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

stories,  in  the  lighter  vein,  regarding  some 
of  its  inmates.  Thus,  there  was  a  certain 
furious  ex-trooper,  lately  reeking  with  blood, 
who  got  himself  much  commended  by  living 
on  baked  apples ;  and  a  young  nobleman  who 
devoted  himself  to  the  work  of  washing  daily 
the  monastery  spittoons.  One  Brother,  the 
story  runs,  having  one  day  said  there  was  too 
much  salt  in  his  scalding -hot  broth,  imme- 
diately burst  into  tears  of  contrition  for  his 
wickedness  in  complaining ;  and  another  went 
for  so  many  years  without  raising  his  eyes 
that  he  knew  not  a  new  chapel  had  been  built, 
and  so  quite  cracked  his  skull  one  day  against 
the  wall  of  it. 

The  abbey  was  an  asylum  for  the  poor  and 
helpless,  the  shipwrecked,  the  conscience- 
stricken,  and  the  broken-hearted  —  for  that 
meditative  type  of  fervid  piety  which  for  ages 
has  looked  upon  the  cloister  as  the  true  earth- 
ly paradise  wherein  to  rear  the  difficult  edifice 
of  the  soul's  salvation.  Much  noble  blood 
sought  De  Ranch's  retreat  to  wash  out  its  ter- 
rifying stains,  and  more  than  one  reckless 
•spirit  went  thither  to  take  upon  itself  the 
yoke  of  purer,  sweeter  usages. 

De  Ranch's  work  remains  an  influence  in 
the  world.  His  monastery  and  his  reform  con- 
stitute the  true  background  of  material  and 
153 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

spiritual  fact  against  which  to  outline  the  pres- 
ent Abbey  of  La  Trappe  in  Kentucky.  Even 
when  thus  viewed,  it  seems  placed  where  it  is 
only  by  some  freak  of  history.  An  abbey  of 
La  Trappe  in  Kentucky !  How  inharmonious 
with  every  element  of  its  environment  appears 
this  fragment  of  old  French  monastic  life  !  It 
is  the  twelfth  century  touching  the  last  of  the 
nineteenth — the  Old  World  reappearing  in  the 
New.  Here  are  French  faces  —  here  is  the 
French  tongue.  Here  is  the  identical  white 
cowl  presented  to  blessed  St.  Alberick  in  the 
forests  of  Burgundy  nine  hundred  years  ago. 
Here  is  the  rule  of  St.  Benedict,  patriarch  of 
the  Western  monks  in  the  sixth  century. 
When  one  is  put  out  at  the  way-side  station, 
amid  woodlands  and  fields  of  Indian-corn,  and, 
leaving  the  world  behind  him,  turns  his  foot- 
steps across  the  country  towards  the  abbey, 
more  than  a  mile  away,  the  seclusion  of  the  re- 
gion, its  ineffable  quietude,  the  infinite  isola- 
tion of  the  life  passed  by  the  silent  brother- 
hood— all  bring  vividly  before  the  mind  the 
image  of  that  ancient  distant  abbey  with  which 
this  one  holds  connection  so  sacred  and  so 
close.  Is  it  not  the  veritable  spot  in  Norman- 
dy? Here,  too,  is  the  broad  basin  of  retired 
country ;  here  the  densely  wooded  hills,  shut- 
ting it  in  from  the  world ;  here  the  orchards 
154 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

and  vineyards  and  gardens  of  the  ascetic 
devotees ;  and,  as  the  night  falls  from  the  low, 
blurred  sky  of  gray,  and  cuts  short  a  silent 
contemplation  of  the  scene,  here,  too,  one  finds 
one's  self,  like  some  belated  traveller  in  the 
dangerous  forests  of  old,  hurrying  on  to  reach 
the  porter's  lodge,  and  .isk  within  the  sacred 
walls  the  hospitality  of  the  venerable  abbot. 


FOR  nearly  a  century  after  the  death  of 
De  Ranc6  it  is  known  that  his  followers 
faithfully  maintained  his  reform  at  La 
Trappe.  Then  the  French  Revolution  drove 
the  Trappists  as  wanderers  into  various  coun- 
tries, and  the  abbey  was  made  a  foundery  for 
cannon.  A  small  branch  of  the  order  came  in 
1804  to  the  United  States,  and  established  it- 
self for  a  while  in  Pennsylvania,  but  soon  turn- 
ed its  eyes  towards  the  greater  wilds  and  soli- 
tudes of  Kentucky.  For  this  there  was  rea- 
son. Kentucky  was  early  a  great  pioneer  of 
the  Catholic  Church  in  the  United  States. 
Here  the  first  episcopal  see  of  the  West  was 
erected,  and  Bardstown  held  spiritual  jurisdic- 
tion, within  certain  parallels  of  latitude,  over 
all  States  and  Territories  between  the  two 
oceans.  Here,  too,  were  the  first  Catholic  mis- 
sionaries of  the  West,  except  those  who  were 
to  be  found  in  the  French  stations  along  the 
Wabash  and  the  Mississippi.  Indeed,  the  Cath- 
156 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

olic  population  of  Kentucky,  which  was  prin- 
cipally descended  from  the  colonists  of  Lord 
Baltimore,  had  begun  to  enter  the  State  as 
early  as  1775,  the  nucleus  of  their  settlements 
soon  becoming  Nelson  County,  the  locality  of 
the  present  abbey.  Likewise  it  should  be  re- 
membered that  the  Catholic  Church  in  the 
United  States,  especially  that  portion  of  it  in 
Kentucky,  owes  a  great  debt  to  the  zeal  of 
the  exiled  French  clergy  of  early  days.  That 
buoyancy  and  elasticity  of  the  French  charac- 
ter, which  naturally  adapts  it  to  every  circum- 
stance and  emergency,  was  then  most  demanded 
and  most  efficacious.  From  these  exiles  the 
infant  missions  of  the  State  were  supplied  with 
their  most  devoted  laborers. 

Hither,  accordingly,  the  Trappists  removed 
from  Pennsylvania,  establishing  themselves  on 
Pottinger's  Creek,  near  Rohan's  Knob,  several 
miles  from  the  present  site.  But  they  remained 
only  a  few  years.  The  climate  of  Kentucky  was 
ill-suited  to  their  life  of  unrelaxed  asceticism ; 
their  restless  superior  had  conceived  a  desire  to 
christianize  Indian  children,  and  so  removed 
the  languishing  settlement  to  Missouri.  There 
is  not  space  for  following  the  solemn  march  of 
those  austere  exiles  through  the  wildernesses 
of  the  New  World.  From  Missouri  they  went 
to  an  ancient  Indian  burying-ground  in  Illinois, 
157 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

and  there  built  up  a  sort  of  village  in  the  heart 
of  the  prairie ;  but  the  great  mortality  from 
which  they  suffered,  and  the  subsidence  of  the 
fury  of  the  French  Revolution  recalled  them  in 
1813  to  France,  to  reoccupy  the  establishments 
from  which  they  had  been  banished. 

It  was  of  this  body  that  Dickens,  in  his 
Afnerican  Notes,  wrote  as  follows: 

Looming  up  in  the  distance,  as  we  rode  along,  was 
another  of  the  ancient  Indian  burial-places,  called 
Monk's  Mound,  in  memory  of  a  body  of  fanatics  of 
the  order  of  La  Trappe,  who  founded  a  desolate  con- 
vent there  many  years  ago,  when  there  were  no  settle- 
ments within  a  thousand  miles,  and  were  all  swept  off 
by  the  pernicious  climate  ;  in  which  lamentable  fatal- 
ity few  rational  people  will  suppose,  perhaps,  that 
society  experienced  any  very  severe  deprivation. 

This  is  a  better  place  in  which  to  state  a 
miracle  than  discuss  it ;  and  the  following  ac- 
count of  a  heavenly  portent,  which  is  related  to 
have  been  vouchsafed  the  Trappists  while  so- 
journing in  Kentucky,  may  be  given  without 
comment : 

In  the  year  1808  the  moon,  being  then  about  two- 
thirds  full,  presented  a  most  remarkable  appearance. 
A  bright,  luminous  cross,  clearly  defined,  was  seen  in 
the  heavens,  with  its  arms  intersecting  the  centre  of 
the  moon.  On  each  side  two  smaller  crosses  were 
also  distinctly  visible,  though  the  portions  of  them 
158 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

most  distant  from  the  moon  were  more  faintly  marked. 
This  strange  phenomenon  continued  for  several  hours, 
and  was  witnessed  by  the  Trappists  on  their  arising,  as 
usual,  at  midnight,  to  sing  the  Divine  praise. 

The  present  monastery,  which  is  called  the 
Abbey  of  Gethsemane,  owes  its  origin  immedi- 
ately to  the  Abbey  of  La  Meilleraye,  of  the  de- 
partment of  the  Loire-Inf6rieure,  France.  The 
abbot  of  the  latter  had  concluded  arrangements 
with  the  French  Government  to  found  a  house 
in  the  island  of  Martinique,  on  an  estate  grant- 
ed by  Louis  Philippe  ;  but  this  monarch's  rule 
having  been  overturned,  the  plan  was  aban- 
doned in  favor  of  a  colony  in  the  United  States. 
Two  Fathers,  with  the  view  of  selecting  a  site, 
came  to  New  York  in  the  summer  of  1848,  and 
naturally  turned  their  eyes  to  the  Catholic  set- 
tlements in  Kentucky,  and  to  the  domain  of  the 
pioneer  Trappists.  In  the  autumn  of  that  year, 
accordingly,  about  forty  -  five  "  religious  "  left 
the  mother-abbey  of  La  Meilleraye,  set  sail  from 
Havre  de  Grace  for  New  Orleans,  went  thence 
by  boat  to  Louisville,  and  from  this  point  walked 
to  Gethsemane,  a  distance  of  some  sixty  miles. 
Although  scattered  among  various  countries  of 
Europe,  the  Trappists  have  but  two  convents 
in  the  United  States — this,  the  oldest,  and  one 
near  Dubuque,  Iowa,  a  colony  from  the  abbey 
in  Ireland. 

159 


Ill 


THE  domain  of  the  abbey  comprises  some 
seventeen  hundred  acres  of  land,  part  of 
which  is  tillable,  while  the  rest  consists 
of  a  range  of  wooded  knobs  that  furnish  timber 
to  the  monastery  steam  saw-mill.  Around  this 
domain  lie  the  homesteads  of  Kentucky  farm- 
ers, who  make  indifferent  monks.  One  leaves 
the  public  road  that  winds  across  the  open 
country  and  approaches  the  monastery  through 
a  long,  level  avenue,  enclosed  on  each  side  by  a 
hedge-row  of  cedars,  and  shaded  by  nearly  a 
hundred  beautiful  English  elms,  the  offspring 
of  a  single  parent  stem.  Traversing  this  dim, 
sweet  spot,  where  no  sound  is  heard  but  the 
waving  of  boughs  and  the  softened  notes  of 
birds,  one  reaches  the  porter's  lodge,  a  low, 
brick  building,  on  each  side  of  which  extends 
the  high  brick-wall  that  separates  the  inner 
from  the  outer  world.  Passing  beneath  the 
archway  of  the  lodge,  one  discovers  a  graceful 
bit  of  landscape  gardening — walks  fringed  with 
i6o 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

cedars,  beds  for  flowers,  pathways  so  thickly 
strewn  with  sawdust  that  the  heaviest  footfall 
is  unheard,  a  soft  turf  of  green,  disturbed  only 
by  the  gentle  shadows  of  the  pious  -  looking 
Benedictine  trees ;  a  fit  spot  for  recreation  and 
meditation.  It  is  with  a  sort  of  worldly  start 
that  you  come  upon  an  enclosure  at  one  end  of 
these  grounds  wherein  a  populous  family  of 
white-cowled  rabbits  trip  around  in  the  most 
noiseless  fashion,  and  seemed  ashamed  of  being 
caught  living  together  in  family  relations. 

Architecturally  there  is  little  to  please  the 
aesthetic  sense  in  the  monastery  building,  along 
the  whole  front  of  which  these  grounds  extend. 
It  is  a  great  quadrangular  pile  of  brick,  three 
stories  high,  heated  by  furnaces  and  lighted  by 
gas — modern  appliances  which  heighten  the 
contrast  with  the  ancient  life  whose  needs  they 
subserve.  Within  the  quadrangle  is  a  green 
inner  court,  also  beautifully  laid  off.  On  one 
side  are  two  chapels,  the  one  appropriated  to 
the  ordinary  services  of  the  Church,  and  en- 
tered from  without  the  abbey-wall  by  all  who 
desire ;  the  other,  consecrated  to  the  offices  of 
the  Trappist  order,  entered  only  from  within, 
and  accessible  exclusively  to  males.  It  is  here 
that  one  finds  occasion  to  remember  the  Trap- 
pist's  vow  of  poverty.  The  vestments  are  far 
from  rich,  the  decorations  of  the  altar  far  from 
L  i6i 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

splendid.  The  crucifixion-scene  behind  the 
altar  consists  of  wooden  figures  carved  by  one 
of  the  monks  now  dead,  and  painted  with  lit- 
tle art.  No  tender  light  of  many  hues  here 
streams  through  long  windows  rich  with  holy 
reminiscence  and  artistic  fancy.  The  church 
has,  albeit,  a  certain  beauty  of  its  own — that 
charm  which  is  inseparable  from  fine  proportion 
in  stone  and  from  gracefully  disposed  columns 
growing  into  the  arches  of  the  lofty  roof.  But 
the  cold  gray  of  the  interior,  severe  and  unre- 
lieved, bespeaks  a  place  where  the  soul  comes 
to  lay  itself  in  simplicity  before  the  Eternal  as 
it  would  upon  a  naked,  solitary  rock  of  the 
desert.  Elsewhere  in  the  abbey  greater  evi- 
dences of  votive  poverty  occur — in  the  various 
statues  and  shrines  of  the  Virgin,  in  the  pict- 
ures and  prints  that  hang  in  the  main  front 
corridor — in  all  that  appertains  to  the  material 
life  of  the  community. 

Just  outside  the  church,  beneath  the  per- 
petual benediction  of  the  cross  on  its  spire,  is 
the  quiet  cemetery  garth,  where  the  dead  are 
side  by  side,  their  graves  covered  with  myrtle 
and  having  each  for  its  headstone  a  plain 
wooden  crucifix  bearing  the  religious  name  and 
station  of  him  who  lies  below — Father  Hon- 
orius,  Father  Timotheus,  Brother  Hilarius, 
Brother  Eutropius.  Who  are  they  ?  And 
162 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

whence?  And  by  what  familiar  names  were 
they  greeted  on  the  old  play-grounds  and  battle- 
fields of  the  world  ? 

The  Trappists  do  not,  as  it  is  commonly 
understood,  daily  dig  a  portion  of  their  own 
graves.  When  one  of  them  dies  and  has  been 
buried,  a  new  grave  is  begun  beside  the  one 
just  filled,  as  a  reminder  to  the  survivors  that 
one  of  them  must  surely  take  his  place  therein. 
So,  too,  when  each  seeks  the  cemetery  enclos- 
ure, in  hours  of  holy  meditation,  and,  standing 
bareheaded  among  the  graves,  prays  softly  for 
the  souls  of  his  departed  brethren,  he  may 
come  for  a  time  to  this  unfinished  grave,  and, 
kneeling,  pray  Heaven,  if  he  be  next,  to  dismiss 
his  soul  in  peace. 

Nor  do  they  sleep  in  the  dark,  abject  kennel, 
which  the  imagination,  in  the  light  of  mediaeval 
history,  constructs  as  the  true  monk's  cell.  By 
the  rule  of  St.  Benedict,  they  sleep  separate, 
but  in  the  same  dormitory — a  great  upper 
room,  well  lighted  and  clean,  in  the  body  of 
which  a  general  framework  several  feet  high  is 
divided  into  partitions  that  look  like  narrow 
berths. 


IV 


WE  have  acquired  poetical  and  pictorial 
conceptions  of  monks — praying  with 
wan  faces  and  upturned  eyes  half 
darkened  by  the  shadowing  cowl,  the  coarse 
serge  falling  away  from  the  emaciated  neck, 
the  hands  pressing  the  crucifix  close  to  the 
heart ;  and  with  this  type  has  been  associated 
a  certain  idea  of  cloistral  life — that  it  was  an 
existence  of  vacancy  and  idleness,  or  at  best  of 
deep  meditation  of  the  soul  broken  only  by 
express  spiritual  devotions.  There  is  another 
kind  of  monk,  with  the  marks  of  which  we  seem 
traditionally  familiar :  the  monk  with  the  rubi- 
cund face,  sleek  poll,  good  epigastric  develop- 
ment, and  slightly  unsteady  gait,  with  whom, 
in  turn,  we  have  connected  a  different  phase 
of  conventual  discipline — fat  capon  and  stubble 
goose,  and  midnight  convivial  chantings  grow- 
ing ever  more  fast  and  furious,  but  finally  dying 
away  in  a  heavy  stertorous  calm.  Poetry,  art, 
the  drama,  the  novel,  have  each  portrayed 
164 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

human  nature  in  orders ;  the  saint-like  monk, 
the  intellectual  monk,  the  bibulous,  the  feloni- 
ous, the  fighting  monk  (who  loves  not  the  her- 
mit of  Copmanhurst  ?),  until  the  memory  is 
stored  and  the  imagination  preoccupied. 

Living  for  a  while  in  a  Trappist  monastery 
in  modern  America,  one  gets  a  pleasant  actual 
experience  of  other  types  no  less  picturesque 
and  on  the  whole  much  more  acceptable.  He 
finds  himself,  for  one  thing,  brought  face  to 
face  with  the  working  monk.  Idleness  to  the 
Trappist  is  the  enemy  of  the  soul,  and  one  of 
his  vows  is  manual  labor.  Whatever  a  monk's 
previous  station  may  have  been,  he  must  per- 
form, according  to  abbatial  direction,  the  most 
menial  services.  None  are  exempt  from  work ; 
there  is  no  place  among  them  for  the  sluggard. 
When  it  is  borne  in  mind  that  the  abbey  is  a 
self-dependent  institution,  where  the  healthy 
must  be  maintained,  the  sick  cared  for,  the 
dead  buried,  the  necessity  for  much  work  be- 
comes manifest.  In  fact,  the  occupations  are 
as  various  as  those  of  a  modern  factory.  There 
is  scope  for  intellects  of  all  degrees  and  talents 
of  wellnigh  every  order.  Daily  life,  unremit- 
tingly from  year  to  year,  is  an  exact  system 
of  duties  and  hours.  The  building,  covering 
about  an  acre  of  ground  and  penetrated  by  cor- 
ridors, must  be  kept  faultlessly  clean.  There 
165      - 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

are  three  kitchens — one  for  the  guests,  one  for 
the  community,  and  one  for  the  infirmary — 
that  require  each  a  coquinarius  and  separate 
assistants.  There  is  a  tinker's  shop  and  a  phar- 
macy ;  a  saddlery,  where  the  broken  gear  used 
in  cultivating  the  monastery  lands  is  mended ; 
a  tailor's  shop,  where  the  worn  garments  are 
patched  ;  a  shoemaker's  shop,  where  the  coarse, 
heavy  shoes  of  the  monks  are  made  and  cob- 
bled ;  and  a  barber's  shop,  where  the  Trappist 
beard  is  shaved  twice  a  month  and  the  Trap- 
pist head  is  monthly  shorn. 

Out-doors  the  occupations  are  even  more 
varied.  The  community  do  not  till  the  farm. 
The  greater  part  of  their  land  is  occupied  by 
tenant  farmers,  and  what  they  reserve  for  their 
own  use  is  cultivated  by  the  so-called  "  family 
brothers,"  who,  it  is  due  to  say,  have  no  fam- 
ilies, but  live  as  celibates  on  the  abbey  domain, 
subject  to  the  abbot's  authority,  without  being 
members  of  the  order.  The  monks,  however, 
do  labor  in  the  ample  gardens,  orchards,  and 
vineyard,  from  which  they  derive  their  suste- 
nance, in  the  steam  saw-mill  and  grain-mill, 
in  the  dairy  and  the  cheese  factory.  Thus 
picturesquely  engaged  one  may  find  them  in 
autumn :  monks  gathering  apples  and  making 
pungent  cider,  which  is  stored  away  in  the  vast 
cellar  as  their  only  beverage  except  water ; 
i66 


A    FORTNIGHTLY    SHAVE 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

monks  repairing  the  shingle  roof  of  a  stable ; 
monks  feeding  the  huge  swine,  which  they 
fatten  for  the  board  of  their  carnal  guests,  or 
the  fluttering  multitude  of  chickens,  from  the 
eggs  and  young  of  which  they  derive  a  slender 
revenue  ;  monks  grouped  in  the  garden  around 
a  green  and  purple  heap  of  turnips,  to  be  stored 
up  as  a  winter  relish  of  no  mean  distinction. 

Amid  such  scenes  one  forgets  all  else  while 
enjoying  the  wealth  and  freshness  of  artistic 
effects.  What  a  picture  is  this  young  Belgian 
cheese -maker,  his  sleeves  rolled  above  the 
elbows  of  his  brawny  arms,  his  great  pinkish 
hands  buried  in  the  golden  curds,  the  cap  of 
his  serge  cloak  falling  back  and  showing  his 
closely  clipped  golden-brown  hair,  blue  eyes, 
and  clear,  delicate  skin !  Or  this  Australian 
ex-farmer,  as  he  stands  by  the  hopper  of  grist 
or  lays  on  his  shoulder  a  bag  of  flour  for  the 
coarse  brown-bread  of  the  monks.  Or  this 
dark  old  French  opera  singer,  who  strutted  his 
brief  hour  on  many  a  European  stage,  but  now 
hobbles  around,  hoary  in  his  cowl  and  blanched 
with  age,  to  pick  up  a  handful  of  garlic.  Or 
this  athletic  young  Irishman,  thrusting  a  great 
iron  prod  into  the  glowing  coals  of  the  saw- 
mill furnace.  Or  this  slender  Switzer,  your  at- 
tendant in  the  refectory,  with  great  keys  dang- 
ling from  his  leathern  cincture,  who  stands  by 
167 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

with  folded  hands  and  bowed  head  while  you 
are  eating  the  pagan  meal  he  has  prepared  for 
you. 

From  various  countries  of  the  Old  World 
men  find  their  way  into  the  Abbey  of  Geth- 
semane,  but  among  them  are  no  Americans. 
Repeatedly  the  latter  have  joined  the  order, 
and  have  failed  to  persevere  up  to  the  final 
consecration  of  the  white  cowl.  The  fairest 
warning  is  given  to  the  postulant.  He  is  made 
to  understand  the  entire  extent  of  the  obliga- 
tion he  has  assumed ;  and  only  after  passing 
through  a  novitiate,  prolonged  at  the  discre- 
tion of  the  abbot,  is  he  admitted  to  the  vows 
that  must  be  kept  unbroken  till  death. 


FROM  the  striking  material  aspects  of 
their  daily  life,  one  is  soon  recalled  to  a 
sense  of  their  subordination  to  spiritual 
aims  and  pledges ;  for  upon  them,  like  a  spell 
of  enchantment,  lies  the  sacred  silence.  The 
honey  has  been  taken  from  the  bees  with  solem- 
nity ;  the  grapes  have  been  gathered  without 
song  and  mirth.  The  vow  of  life-long  silence 
taken  by  the  Trappist  must  of  course  not  be 
construed  literally ;  but  there  are  only  two  oc- 
casions during  which  it  is  completely  set  aside 
— when  confessing  his  sins  and  when  singing 
the  offices  of  the  Church.  At  all  other  times 
his  tongue  becomes,  as  far  as  possible,  a  super- 
fluous member ;  he  speaks  only  by  permission 
of  his  superior,  and  always  simply  and  to  the 
point.  The  monk  at  work  with  another  ex- 
changes with  him  only  the  few  low,  necessary 
words,  and  those  that  provoke  no  laughter. 
Of  the  three  so-called  monastic  graces,  Sim- 
plicitaSy  Benignitas^  Hilar itas^  the  last  is  not 
169 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

his.  Even  for  necessary  speech  he  is  taught 
to  substitute  a  language  of  signs,  as  fully  sys- 
tematized as  the  speech  of  the  deaf  and  dumb. 
Should  he,  while  at  work,  wound  his  fellow- 
workman,  sorrow  may  be  expressed  by  strik- 
ing his  breast.  A  desire  to  confess  is  shown 
by  lifting  one  hand  to  the  mouth  and  striking 
the  breast  with  the  other.  The  maker  of 
cheese  crosses  two  fingers  at  the  middle  point 
to  let  you  know  that  it  is  made  half  of  milk 
and  half  of  cream.  The  guest-master,  whose 
business  it  is  to  act  as  your  guide  through  the 
abbey  and  the  grounds,  is  warily  mindful  of 
his  special  functions  and  requests  you  to  ad- 
dress none  but  him.  Only  the  abbot  is  free  to 
speak  when  and  as  his  judgment  may  approve. 
It  is  silence,  says  the  Trappist,  that  shuts  out 
new  ideas,  worldly  topics,  controversy.  It  is 
silence  that  enables  the  soul  to  contemplate 
with  singleness  and  mortification  the  infinite 
perfections  of  the  Eternal. 

In  the  abbey  it  is  this  pervasive  hush  that 
falls  like  a  leaden  pall  upon  the  stranger 
who  has  rushed  in  from  the  talking  universe. 
Are  these  priests  modern  survivals  of  the 
rapt  solitaries  of  India?  The  days  pass,  and 
the  world,  which  seemed  in  hailing  distance 
to  you  at  first,  has  receded  to  dim  remote- 
ness. You  stand  at  the  window  of  your  room 
170 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

looking  out,  and  hear  in  the  autumn  trees 
only  the  flute -like  note  of  some  migratory- 
bird,  passing  slowly  on  towards  the  south. 
You  listen  within,  and  hear  but  a  key  turning 
in  distant  locks  and  the  slow-retreating  foot- 
steps of  some  dusky  figure  returning  to  its 
lonely  self-communings.  The  utmost  precau- 
tion is  taken  to  avoid  noise  ;  in  the  dormitory 
not  even  your  guide  will  speak  to  you,  but  ex- 
plains by  gesture  and  signs.  During  the  short 
siesta  the  Trappists  allow  themselves,  if  one 
of  them,  not  wishing  to  sleep,  gets  permission 
to  read  in  his  so-called  cell,  he  must  turn  the 
pages  of  his  book  inaudibly.  In  the  refectory, 
while  the  meal  is  eaten  and  the  appointed 
reader  in  the  tribune  goes  through  a  service, 
if  one  through  carelessness  makes  a  noise  by 
so  much  as  dropping  a  fork  or  a  spoon,  he 
leaves  his  seat  and  prostrates  himself  on  the 
floor  until  bidden  by  the  superior  to  arise. 
The  same  penance  is  undergone  in  the  church 
by  any  one  who  should  distract  attention  with 
the  clasp  of  his  book, 

A  hard  life,  to  purely  human  seeming,  does 
the  Trappist  make  for  the  body.  He  thinks 
nothing  of  it.  It  is  his  evil  tenement  of  flesh, 
whose  humors  are  an  impediment  to  sanctifi- 
cation,  whose  propensities  are  to  be  kept  down 
by  the  practice  of  austerities.  To  it  in  part  his 
171 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

monastic  vows  are  addressed — perpetual  and 
utter  poverty,  chastity,  manual  labor,  silence, 
seclusion,  penance,  obedience.  The  perfections 
and  glories  of  his  monastic  state  culminate  in 
the  complete  abnegation  and  destruction  of 
animal  nature,  and  in  the  correspondence  of 
his  earthly  life  with  the  holiness  of  divine  in- 
struction. The  war  of  the  Jesuit  is  with  the 
world ;  the  war  of  the  Trappist  is  with  himself. 
From  his  narrow  bed,  on  which  are  simply  a 
coarse  thin  mattress,  pillow,  sheet,  and  coverlet, 
he  rises  at  two  o'clock,  on  certain  days  at  one, 
on  others  yet  at  twelve.  He  has  not  undressed, 
but  has  slept  in  his  daily  garb,  with  the  cincture 
around  his  waist. 

This  dress  consists,  if  he  be  a  brother,  of  the 
roughest  dark-brown  serge-like  stuff,  the  over- 
garment of  which  is  a  long  robe ;  if  a  Father, 
of  a  similar  material,  but  white  in  color,  the 
over-garment  being  the  cowl,  beneath  which 
is  the  black  scapular.  He  changes  it  only  once 
in  two  weeks.  The  frequent  use  of  the  bath, 
as  tending  to  luxuriousness,  is  forbidden  him, 
especially  if  he  be  young.  His  diet  is  vege- 
tables, fruit,  honey,  cider,  cheese,  and  brown- 
bread.  Only  when  sick  or  infirm  may  he  take 
even  fish  or  eggs.  His  table-service  is  pewter, 
plain  earthenware,  a  heavy  wooden  spoon  and 
fork  of  his  own  making,  and  the  bottom  of  a 
172 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

broken  bottle  for  a  salt-cellar.  If  he  wears 
the  white  cowl,  he  eats  but  one  such  frugal 
repast  a  day  during  part  of  the  year;  if  the 
brown  robe,  and  therefore  required  to  do  more 
work,  he  has  besides  this  meal  an  early  morn- 
ing luncheon  called  "mixt."  He  renounces 
all  claim  to  his  own  person,  all  right  over  his 
own  powers.  "  I  am  as  wax,"  he  exclaims  ; 
"mould  me  as  you  will."  By  the  law  of  his 
patron  saint,  if  commanded  to  do  things  too 
hard,  or  even  impossible,  he  must  still  under- 
take them. 

For  the  least  violations  of  the  rules  of  his 
order ;  for  committing  a  mistake  while  recit- 
ing a  psalm,  responsory,  antiphon,  or  lesson  ; 
for  giving  out  one  note  instead  of  another,  or 
saying  doininus  instead  of  domino ;  iox  break- 
ing or  losing  anything,  or  committing  any 
fault  while  engaged  in  any  kind  of  work  in 
kitchen,  pantry,  bakery,  garden,  trade,  or  busi- 
ness— he  must  humble  himself  and  make  pub- 
lic satisfaction  forthwith.  Nay,  more  :  each 
by  his  vows  is  forced  to  become  his  brother's 
keeper,  and  to  proclaim  him  publicly  in  the 
community  chapter  for  the  slightest  overt 
transgression.  For  charity's  sake,  however, 
he  may  not  judge  motives  nor  make  vague 
general  charges. 

The  Trappist  does  not  walk  beyond  the  en- 
173 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

closures  except  by  permission.  He  must  re- 
press ineffably  tender  yearnings  that  visit  and 
vex  the  human  heart  in  this  life.  The  death 
of  the  nearest  kindred  is  not  announced  to 
him.  Forgotten  by  the  world,  by  him  it  is 
forgotten.  Yet  not  wholly.  When  he  lays 
the  lashes  of  the  scourge  on  his  flesh— it  may 
be  on  his  carious  bones — he  does  it  not  for  his 
own  sins  alone,  but  for  the  sins  of  the  whole 
world ;  and  in  his  searching,  self  -  imposed 
humiliations,  there  is  a  silent,  broad  out-reach- 
ing of  sympathetic  effort  in  behalf  of  all  his 
kind.  Sorrow  may  not  depict  itself  freely  on 
his  face.  If  a  suffering  invalid,  he  must  mani- 
fest no  interest  in  the  progress  of  his  malady, 
feel  no  concern  regarding  the  result.  In  his 
last  hour,  he  sees  ashes  strewn  upon  the  floor 
in  the  form  of  a  cross,  a  thin  scattering  of 
straw  made  over  them,  and  his  body  extended 
thereon  to  die  ;  and  from  this  hard  bed  of 
death  he  knows  it  will  be  borne  on  a  bier  by 
his  brethren  and  laid  in  the  grave  without 
coffin  or  shroud. 


VI 


BUT  who  can  judge  such  a  life  save  him 
who  has  lived  it?  Who  can  say  what 
undreamt  -  of  spiritual  compensations 
may  not  come  even  in  this  present  time  as  a 
reward  for  bodily  austerities  ?  What  fine  real- 
ities may  not  body  themselves  forth  to  the  eye 
of  the  soul,  strained  of  grossness,  steadied  from 
worldly  agitation,  and  taught  to  gaze  year  after 
year  into  the  awfulness  and  mystery  of  its  own 
being  and  deep  destiny  ?  "  Monasticism,"  says 
Mr.  Froude,  "  we  believe  to  have  been  the  real- 
ization of  the  infinite  loveliness  and  beauty  of 
personal  purity  ;  and  the  saint  in  the  desert 
was  the  apotheosis  of  the  spiritual  man."  How- 
ever this  may  be,  here  at  Gethsemane  you  see 
one  of  the  severest  expressions  of  its  faith  that 
the  soul  has  ever  given,  either  in  ancient  or  in 
modern  times  ;  and  you  cease  to  think  of  these 
men  as  members  of  a  religious  order,  in  the 
study  of  them  as  exponents  of  a  common  hu- 
manity struggling  with  the  problem  of  its  rela- 
175 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

tion  to  the  Infinite.  One  would  wish  to  lay 
hold  upon  the  latent  elements  of  power  and 
truth  and  beauty  in  their  system  which  enables 
them  to  say  with  quiet  cheerfulness,  "  We  are 
happy,  perfectly  happy." 

Excepting  this  ceaseless  war  between  flesh 
and  spirit,  the  abbey  seems  a  peaceful  place. 
Its  relations  with  the  outside  world  have  always 
been  kindly.  During  the  Civil  War  it  was  un- 
disturbed by  the  forces  of  each  army.  Food 
and  shelter  it  has  never  denied  even  to  the 
poorest,  and  it  asks  no  compensation,  accept- 
ing such  as  the  stranger  may  give.  The  savor 
of  good  deeds  extends  beyond  its  walls,  and  near 
by  is  a  free  school  under  its  control,  where  for 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  boys  of  all 
creeds  have  been  educated. 

There  comes  some  late  autumnal  afternoon 
when  you  are  to  leave  the  place.  With  a  strange 
feeling  of  farewell,  you  grasp  the  hands  of  those 
whom  you  have  been  given  the  privilege  of 
knowing,  and  step  slowly  out  past  the  meek 
sacristan,  past  the  noiseless  garden,  past  the 
porter's  lodge  and  the  misplaced  rabbits,  past 
the  dim  avenue  of  elms,  past  the  great  iron  gate- 
way, and,  walking  along  the  sequestered  road 
until  you  have  reached  the  summit  of  a  wood- 
ed knoll  half  a  mile  away,  turn  and  look  back. 
Half  a  mile!  The  distance  is  infinite.  The 
176 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

last  rays  of  the  sun  seem  hardly  able  to  reach 
the  pale  cross  on  the  spire  which  anon  fades 
into  the  sky;  and  the  monastery  bell,  that 
sends  its  mellow  tones  across  the  shadowy  land- 
scape, is  rung  from  an  immemorial  past. 

It  is  the  hour  of  the  Compline^  the  Salve,  and 
the  Angelus — the  last  of  the  seven  services  that 
the  Trappist  holds  between  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  and  this  hour  of  early  nightfall.  Stand- 
ing alone  in  the  silent  darkness  you  allow  im- 
agination to  carry  you  once  more  into  the 
church.  You  sit  in  one  of  the  galleries  and  look 
down  upon  the  stalls  of  the  monks  ranged  along 
the  walls  of  the  nave.  There  is  no  light  except 
the  feeble  gleam  of  a  single  low  red  cresset  that 
swings  ever-burning  before  the  altar.  You  can 
just  discern  a  long  line  of  nameless  dusky  fig- 
ures creep  forth  from  the  deeper  gloom  and  glide 
noiselessly  into  their  seats.  You  listen  to  the 
cantus plenus  gravitate — those  long,  level  notes 
with  sorrowful  cadences  and  measured  pauses, 
sung  by  a  full,  unfaltering  chorus  of  voices,  old 
and  young.  It  is  the  song  that  smote  the  heart 
of  Bossuet  with  such  sadness  in  the  desert  of 
Normandy  two  and  a  half  centuries  ago. 

Anon  by  some  unseen  hand  two  tall  candles 
are  lighted  on  the  altar.  The  singing  is  hush- 
ed. From  the  ghostly  line  of  white-robed  Fa- 
thers a  shadowy  figure  suddenly  moves  towards 
M  177 


A  Home  of  the  Silent  Brotherhood 

the  spot  in  the  middle  of  the  church  where  the 
bell-rope  hangs,  and  with  slow,  weird  move- 
ments rings  the  solemn  bell  until  it  fills  the 
cold,  gray  arches  with  quivering  sound.  One 
will  not  in  a  lifetime  forget  the  impressiveness 
of  the  scene — the  long  tapering  shadows  that 
stretch  out  over  the  dimly  lighted,  polished 
floor  from  this  figure  silhouetted  against  the 
brighter  light  from  the  altar  beyond ;  the  bowed, 
moveless  forms  of  the  monks  in  brown  almost 
indiscernible  in  the  gloom  ;  the  spectral  glam- 
our reflected  from  the  robes  of  the  bowed  Fa- 
thers in  white  ;  the  ghastly,  suffering  scene  of 
the  Saviour,  strangely  luminous  in  the  glare  of 
the  tall  candles.  It  is  the  daily  climax  in  the 
devotions  of  the  Old  World  monks  at  Geth- 
semane. 


HOMESTEADS  OF  THE  BLUE-GRASS 


I 


KENTUCKY  is  a  land  of  rural  homes. 
The  people  are  out  in  the  country  with 
a  perennial  appetite  and  passion  for  the 
soil.  Like  Englishmen,  they  are  by  nature  no 
dwellers  in  cities  ;  like  older  Saxon  forefathers, 
they  have  a  strong  feeling  for  a  habitation  even 
no  better  than  a  one-story  log-house,  with  fur- 
niture of  the  rudest  kind,  and  cooking  in  the 
open  air,  if,  only,  it  be  surrounded  by  a  plot  of 
ground  and  individualized  by  all-encompassing 
fences.  They  are  gregarious  at  respectful  dis- 
tances, dear  to  them  being  that  sense  of  per- 
sonal worth  and  importance  which  comes  from 
territorial  aloofness,  from  domestic  privacy, 
from  a  certain  lordship  over  all  they  survey. 

The  land  they  hold  has  a  singular  charm 
and  power  of  infusing  fierce,  tender  desire  of 
ownership.  Centuries  before  it  was  possessed 
by  them,  all  ruthless  aboriginal  wars  for  its 
sole  occupancy  had  resolved  themselves  into 
the  final  understanding  that  it  be  wholly 
i8i 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue- Grass 

claimed  by  none.  Bounty  in  land  was  the 
coveted  reward  of  Virginia  troops  in  the  old 
French  and  Indian  war.  Hereditary  love  Of 
land  drew  the  earliest  settlers  across  the  peril- 
ous mountains.  Rapacity  for  land  caused 
them  to  rush  down  into  the  green  plains,  fall 
upon  the  natives,  slay,  torture,  hack  to  pieces, 
and  sacrifice  wife  and  child,  with  the  swift, 
barbaric  hardihood  and  unappeasable  fury  of 
Northmen  of  old  descending  upon  the  softer 
shores  of  France.  Acquisition  of  land  was  the 
determinative  principle  of  the  new  civilization. 
Litigation  concerning  land  has  made  famous 
the  decisions  of  their  courts  of  law.  The  sur- 
veyor's chain  should  be  wrapped  about  the 
rifle  as  a  symbolic  epitome  of  pioneer  history. 
It  was  for  land  that  they  turned  from  the  Ind- 
ians upon  one  another,  and  wrangled,  cheat- 
ed, and  lied.  They  robbed  Boone  until  he  had 
none  left  in  which  to  lay  his  bones.  One  of 
the  first  acts  of  one  of  the  first  colonists  was  to 
glut  his  appetite  by  the  purchase  of  all  of  the 
State  that  lies  south  of  the  Kentucky  River. 
The  middle-class  land-owner  has  always  been 
the  controlling  element  of  population.  To-day 
more  of  the  people  are  engaged  in  agriculture 
than  in  all  other  pursuits  combined ;  taste  for 
it  has  steadily  drawn  a  rich  stream  of  younger 
generations  hither  and  thither  into  the  young- 
182 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

er  West ;  and  to  -  day,  as  always,  the  broad, 
average  ideal  of  a  happy  life  is  expressed  in 
the  quiet  holding  of  perpetual  pastures. 

Steam,  said  Emerson,  is  almost  an  English- 
man ;  grass  is  almost  a  Kentuckian.  Wealth, 
labor,  productions,  revenues,  public  markets, 
public  improvements,  manners,  characters, 
social  modes  —  all  speak  in  common  of  the 
country,  and  fix  attention  upon  the  soil.  The 
staples  attest  the  predominance  of  agriculture ; 
unsurpassed  breeds  of  stock  imply  the  verdure 
of  the  woodlands ;  turnpikes,  the  finest  on  the 
continent,  furnish  viaducts  for  the  garnered 
riches  of  the  earth,  and  prove  the  high  develop- 
ment of  rural  life,  the  every-day  luxury  of  de- 
lightful riding  and  driving.  Even  the  crow, 
the  most  boldly  characteristic  freebooter  of 
the  air,  whose  cawing  is  often  the  only  sound 
heard  in  dead  February  days,  or  whose  flight 
amid  his  multitudinous  fellows  forms  long 
black  lines  across  the  morning  and  the  evening 
sky,  tells  of  fat  pickings  and  profitable  thefts 
in  innumerable  fields.  In  Kentucky  a  rustic 
young  woman  of  Homeric  sensibility  might  be 
allowed  to  discover  in  the  slow-moving  pano- 
rama of  white  clouds  her  father's  herd  of  short- 
horned  cattle  grazing  through  heavenly  past- 
ures, and  her  lover  to  see  in  the  halo  around 
the  moon  a  perfect  celestial  race-track. 
183 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

Comparatively  weak  and  unpronounced  are 
the  features  of  urban  life.  The  many  little 
towns  and  villages  scattered  at  easy  distances 
over  the  State  for  the  most  part  draw  out  a 
thin  existence  by  reason  of  surrounding  rural 
populations.  They  bear  the  pastoral  stamp. 
Up  to  their  very  environs  approach  the  culti- 
vated fields,  the  meadows  of  brilliant  green, 
the  delicate  woodlands ;  in  and  out  along  the 
white  highways  move  the  tranquil  currents  of 
rural  trade;  through  their  streets  groan  and 
creak  the  loaded  wagons ;  on  the  sidewalks 
the  most  conspicuous  human  type  is  the  owner 
of  the  soil.  Once  a  month  county-seats  over- 
flow with  the  incoming  tide  of  country  folk, 
livery  stables  are  crowded  with  horses  and 
vehicles,  court  -  house  squares  become  market- 
places for  traffic  in  stock.  But  when  emptied 
of  country  folk,  they  sink  again  into  repose, 
all  but  falling  asleep  of  summer  noonings,  and 
in  winter  seeming  frost-locked  with  the  outly- 
ing woods  and  streams. 

Remarkable  is  the  absence  of  considerable 
cities,  there  being  but  one  that  may  be  said 
truly  to  reflect  Kentucky  life,  and  that  situ- 
ated on  the  river  frontier,  a  hundred  miles 
from  the  center  of  the  State.  Think  of  it !  A 
population  of  some  two  millions  with  only  one 
interior  town  that  contains  over  five  thousand 
184 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

white  inhabitants.  Hence  Kentucky  makes 
no  impression  abroad  by  reason  of  its  urban 
population.  Lexington,  Bowling  Green,  Har- 
rodsburg,  Winchester,  Richmond,  Frankfort, 
Mount  Sterling,  and  all  the  others,  where  do 
they  stand  in  the  scale  of  American  cities? 
Hence,  too,  the  disparaging  contrast  liable  to 
be  drawn  between  Kentucky  and  the  gigantic 
young  States  of  the  West.  Where  is  the  mag- 
nitude of  the  commonwealth,  where  the  ground 
of  the  sense  of  importance  in  the  people  ?  No 
huge  mills  and  gleaming  forges,  no  din  of  fac- 
tories and  throb  of  mines,  nowhere  any  colos- 
sal centres  for  rushing,  multiform  American 
energy.  The  answer  must  be:  Judge  the 
State  thus  far  as  an  agricultural  State ;  the 
people  as  an  agricultural  people.  In  time  no 
doubt  the  rest  will  come.  All  other  things 
are  here,  awaiting  occasion  and  development. 
The  eastern  portions  of  the  State  now  verge 
upon  an  era  of  long-delayed  activity.  There 
lie  the  mines,  the  building  -  stone,  the  illimit- 
able wealth  of  timbers ;  there  soon  will  be 
opened  new  fields  for  commercial  and  indus- 
trial centralization.  But  hitherto  in  Kentucky 
it  has  seemed  enough  that  the  pulse  of  life 
should  beat  with  the  heart  of  nature,  and  be 
in  unison  with  the  slow  unfolding  and  deca- 
dence of  the  seasons.  The  farmer  can  go  no 
185 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

faster  than  the  sun,  and  is  rich  or  poor  by  the 
law  of  planetary  orbits.  In  all  central  Ken- 
tucky not  a  single  village  of  note  has  been 
founded  within  three-quarters  of  a  century, 
and  some  villages  a  hundred  years  old  have 
not  succeeded  in  gaining  even  from  this  fecund 
race  more  than  a  thousand  or  two  thousand 
inhabitants.  But  these  little  towns  are  inac- 
cessible to  the  criticism  that  would  assault 
their  commercial  greatness.  Business  is  not 
their  boast.  Sounded  to  its  depths,  the  serene 
sea  in  which  their  existence  floats  will  reveal  a 
bottom,  not  of  mercantile,  but  of  social  ideas ; 
studied  as  to  cost  or  comfort,  the  architecture 
in  which  the  people  have  expressed  themselves 
will  appear  noticeable,  not  in  their  business 
houses  and  public  buildings,  but  in  their 
homes.  If  these  towns  pique  themselves 
pointedly  on  anything,  it  is  that  they  are  the 
centres  of  genial  intercourse  and  polite  enter- 
tainment. Even  commercial  Louisville  must 
find  its  peculiar  distinction  in  the  number  of 
its  sumptuous  private  residences.  It  is  well- 
nigh  a  rule  that  in  Kentucky  the  value  of  the 
house  is  out  of  proportion  to  the  value  of  the 
estate. 

But  if  the  towns  regard  themselves  as  the 
provincial  fortresses  of  good  society,  they  do 
not  look  down  upon  the  home  life  of  the  coun- 
i86 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

try.  Between  country  and  town  in  Kentucky 
exists  a  relation  unique  and  well  to  be  studied : 
such  a  part  of  the  population  of  the  town  own- 
ing or  managing  estates  in  the  country ;  such 
a  part  of  the  population  of  the  country  being 
business  or  professional  men  in  town.  For  it 
is  strikingly  true  that  here  all  vocations  and 
avocations  of  life  may  and  do  go  with  tillage, 
and  there  are  none  it  is  not  considered  to  adorn. 
The  first  Governor  of  the  State  was  awarded 
his  domain  for  raising  a  crop  of  corn,  and  laid 
down  public  life  at  last  to  renew  his  compan- 
ionship with  the  plough.  "  I  retire,"  said  Clay, 
many  years  afterwards,  "  to  the  shades  of  Ash- 
land." The  present  Governor  (1888),  a  man  of 
large  wealth,  lives,  when  at  home,  in  a  rural 
log-house  built  near  the  beginning  of  the  cen- 
tury. His  predecessor  in  office  was  a  farmer. 
Hardly  a  man  of  note  in  all  the  past  or  present 
history  of  the  State  but  has  had  his  near  or 
immediate  origin  in  the  woods  and  fields. 
Formerly  it  was  the  custom — less  general  now 
- — that  young  men  should  take  their  academic 
degrees  in  the  colleges  of  the  United  States, 
sometimes  in  those  of  Europe,  and,  returning 
home,  hang  up  their  diplomas  as  votive  offer- 
ings to  the  god  of  boundaries.  To-day  you 
will  find  the  ex-minister  to  a  foreign  court 
spending  his  final  years  in  the  solitude  of  his 
187 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

farm-house,  and  the  representative  at  Wash- 
ington making  his  retreat  to  the  restful  home- 
stead. The  banker  in  town  bethinks  him  of 
stocks  at  home  that  know  no  panic  ;  the  clergy- 
man studies  St.  Paul  amid  the  native  corn,  and 
muses  on  the  surpassing  beauty  of  David  as  he 
rides  his  favorite  horse  through  green  pastures 
and  beside  still  waters. 

Hence,  to  be  a  farmer  here  implies  no  social 
inferiority,  no  rusticity,  no  boorishness.  Hence, 
so  clearly  interlaced  are  urban  and  rural  so- 
ciety that  there  results  a  homogeneousness  of 
manners,  customs,  dress,  entertainments,  ideals, 
and  tastes.  Hence,  the  infiltration  of  the  coun- 
try with  the  best  the  towns  contain.  More, 
indeed,  than  this  :  rather  to  the  country  than 
to  the  towns  in  Kentucky  must  one  look  for  the 
local  history  of  the  home  life.  There  first  was 
implanted  under  English  and  Virginian  influ- 
ences the  antique  style  of  country-seat ;  there 
flourished  for  a  time  gracious  manners  that 
were  the  high-born  endowment  of  the  olden 
school ;  there  in  piquant  contrast  were  devel- 
oped side  by  side  the  democratic  and  aristo- 
cratic spirits,  working  severally  towards  equal- 
ity and  caste ;  there  was  established  the  State 
reputation  for  effusive  private  hospitalities ; 
and  there  still  are  peculiarly  cherished  the 
fading  traditions  of  more  festive  boards  and 
i88 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

kindlier  hearthstones.  If  the  feeling  of  the 
whole  people  could  be  interpreted  by  a  single 
saying,  it  would  perhaps  be  this  :  that  whether 
in  town  or  country — and  if  in  the  country,  not 
remotely  here  or  there,  but  in  wellnigh  un- 
broken succession  from  estate  to  estate — they 
have  attained  a  notable  stage  in  the  civilization 
of  the  home.  This  is  the  common  conviction, 
this  the  idol  of  the  tribe.  The  idol  itself  may 
rest  on  the  fact  of  provincial  isolation,  which 
is  the  fortress  of  self-love  and  neighborly 
devotion  ;  but  it  suffices  for  the  present  pur- 
pose to  say  that  it  is  an  idol  still,  worshipped 
for  the  divinity  it  is  thought  to  enshrine. 
Hence,  you  may  assail  the  Kentuckian  on  many 
grounds,  and  he  will  hold  his  peace.  You  may 
tell  him  that  he  has  no  great  cities,  that  he  does 
not  run  with  the  currents  of  national  progress; 
but  never  tell  him  that  the  home  life  of  his 
fellows  and  himself  is  not  as  good  as  the  best 
in  the  land.  Domesticity  is  the  State  porcu- 
pine, presenting  an  angry  quill  to  every  point 
of  attack.  To  write  of  homes  in  Kentucky, 
therefore,  and  particularly  of  rural  homes,  is 
to  enter  the  very  citadel  of  the  popular  affec- 
tions. 


II 


AT  first  they  built  for  the  tribe,  working  to- 
/\  gether  like  beavers  in  common  cause 
^  *-  against  nature  and  their  enemies.  Home 
life  and  domestic  architecture  began  among 
them  with  the  wooden-fort  community,  the  idea 
of  which  was  no  doubt  derived  from  the  frontier 
defences  of  Virginia,  and  modified  by  the  Ken- 
tuckians  with  a  view  to  domestic  use.  This 
building  habit  culminated  in  the  erection  of 
some  two  hundred  rustic  castles,  the  sites  of 
which  in  some  instances  have  been  identified. 
It  was  a  singularly  fit  sort  of  structure,  ad- 
justing itself  desperately  and  economically  to 
the  necessities  of  environment.  For  the  time 
society  lapsed  into  a  state  which,  but  for  the 
want  of  lords  and  retainers,  was  feudalism  of  the 
rudest  kind.  There  were  gates  for  sally  and 
swift  retreat,  bastions  for  defence,  and  loop- 
holes in  cabin  walls  for  deadly  volleys.  There 
were  hunting-parties  winding  forth  stealthily 
without  horn  or  hound,  and  returning  with 
190 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

game  that  would  have  graced  the  great  feudal 
halls.  There  was  siege,  too,  and  suffering,  and 
death  enough,  God  knows,  mingled  with  the 
lowing  of  cattle  and  the  clatter  of  looms.  Some 
morning,  even,  you  might  have  seen  a  slight 
girl  trip  covertly  out  to  the  little  cotton-patch 
in  one  corner  of  the  enclosure,  and,  blushing 
crimson  over  the  snowy  cotton-bolls,  pick  the 
wherewithal  to  spin  her  bridal  dress;  for  in 
these  forts  they  married  also  and  bore  children. 
Many  a  Kentucky  family  must  trace  its  origin 
through  the  tribal  communities  pent  up  within 
a  stockade,  and  discover  that  the  family  plate 
consisted  then  of  a  tin  cup,  and,  haply,  an  iron 
fork. 

But,  as  soon  as  might  be,  this  compulsory 
village  life  broke  eagerly  asunder  into  private 
homes.  The  common  building  form  was  that 
of  the  log-house.  It  is  needful  to  distinguish 
this  from  the  log -house  of  the  mountaineer, 
which  is  found  throughout  eastern  Kentucky 
to-day.  Encompassed  by  all  difficulties,  the 
pioneer  yet  reared  himself  a  better,  more  en- 
during habitation.  One  of  these,  still  intact 
after  the  lapse  of  more  than  a  century,  stands 
as  a  singularly  interesting  type  of  its  kind,  and 
brings  us  face  to  face  with  primitive  architec- 
ture. "  Mulberry  Hill,"  a  double  house,  two  and 
a  half  stories  high,  with  a  central  hall,  was  built 
191 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

in  Jefferson  County,  near  Louisville,  in  1785, 
for  John  Clark,  the  father  of  General  George 
Rogers  Clark. 

The  settlers  made  the  mistake  of  supposing 
that  the  country  lacked  building-stone,  so  deep 
under  the  loam  and  verdure  lay  the  whole 
foundation  rock ;  but  soon  they  discovered  that 
their  better  houses  had  only  to  be  taken  from 
beneath  their  feet.  The  first  stone  house  in  the 
State,  and  withal  the  most  notable,  is  "  Travel- 
ler's Rest,"  in  Lincoln  County,  built  in  1783  by 
Governor  Metcalf ,  who  was  then  a  stone-mason, 
for  Isaac  Shelby,  the  first  Governor  of  Ken- 
tucky. To  those  who  know  the  blue-grass  land- 
scape, this  type  of  homestead  is  familiar  enough, 
with  its  solidity  of  foundation,  great  thickness 
of  walls,  enormous,  low  chimneys,  and  little 
windows.  The  owners  were  the  architects  and 
builders,  and  with  stern,  necessitous  industry 
translated  their  condition  into  their  work,  giv- 
ing it  an  intensely  human  element.  It  har- 
monized with  need,  not  with  feeling  ;  was  built 
by  the  virtues,  and  not  by  the  vanities.  With 
no  fine  balance  of  proportion,  with  details  few, 
scant,  and  crude,  the  entire  effect  of  the  archi- 
tecture was  not  unpleasing,  so  honest  was  its 
poverty,  so  rugged  and  robust  its  purpose.  It 
was  the  gravest  of  all  historic  commentaries 
written  in  stone.  Varied  fate  has  overtaken 
192 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

these  old-time  structures.  Many  have  been 
torn  down,  yielding  their  well-chosen  sites  to 
newer,  showier  houses.  Others  became  in  time 
the  quarters  of  the  slaves.  Others  still  have 
been  hidden  away  beneath  weather-boarding 
—  a  veneer  of  commonplace  modernism  —  as 
though  whitewashed  or  painted  plank  were 
finer  than  roughhewn  graystone.  But  one  is 
glad  to  discover  that  in  numerous  instances 
they  are  the  preferred  homes  of  those  who  have 
taste  for  the  old  in  native  history,  and  pride  in 
family  associations  and  traditions.  On  the 
thinned,  open  landscape  nothing  stands  out 
with  a  more  pathetic  air  of  nakedness  than  one 
of  these  stone  houses,  long  since  abandoned  and 
fallen  into  ruin.  Under  the  Kentucky  sky 
houses  crumble  and  die  without  seeming  to 
grow  old,  without  an  aged  toning  down  of  col- 
ors, without  the  tender  memorials  of  mosses 
and  lichens,  and  of  the  whole  race  of  clinging 
things.  So  not  until  they  are  quite  overthrown 
does  Nature  reclaim  them,  or  draw  once  more 
to  her  bosom  the  walls  and  chimneys  within 
whose  faithful  bulwarks,  and  by  whose  cavern- 
ous, glowing  recesses,  our  great-grandmothers 
and  great-grandfathers  danced  and  made  love, 
married,  suffered,  and  fell  asleep. 

Neither  to  the  house  of  logs,  therefore,  nor 
to  that  of  stone  must  we  look  for  the  earliest 

N  193 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

embodiment  of  positive  taste  in  domestic  archi- 
tecture. This  found  its  first,  and,  considering 
the  exigencies  of  the  period,  its  most  note- 
worthy expression  in  the  homestead  of  brick. 
No  finer  specimen  survives  than  that  built  in 
1796,  on  a  plan  furnished  by  Thomas  Jefferson 
to  John  Brown,  who  had  been  his  law  student, 
remained  always  his  honored  friend,  and  be- 
came one  of  the  founders  of  the  commonwealth. 
It  is  a  rich  landmark,  this  old  manor-place  on 
the  bank  of  the  Kentucky  River,  in  Frankfort. 
The  great  hall  with  its  pillared  archway  is  wide 
enough  for  dancing  the  Virginia  reel.  The 
suites  of  high,  spacious  rooms ;  the  carefully 
carved  woodwork  of  the  window-casings  and 
the  doors  ;  the  tall,  quaint  mantel-frames  ;  the 
deep  fireplaces  with  their  shining  fire-dogs  and 
fenders  of  brass,  brought  laboriously  enough 
on  pack-mules  from  Philadelphia;  the  brass 
locks  and  keys ;  the  portraits  on  the  walls — all 
these  bespeak  the  early  implantation  in  Ken- 
tucky of  a  taste  for  sumptuous  life  and  enter- 
tainment. The  house  is  like  a  far-descending 
echo  of  colonial  Old  Virginia. 

Famous  in  its  day — for  it  is  already  beneath 
the  sod — and  built  not  of  wood,  nor  of  stone, 
nor  of  brick,  but  in  part  of  all,  was  "Chau- 
mi^re,"  the  home  of  David  Meade  during  the 
closing  years  of  the  last,  and  the  early  years  of 
194 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

the  present,  century.  The  owner,  a  Virginian 
who  had  been  much  in  England,  brought  back 
with  him  notions  of  the  baronial  style  of  coun- 
try-seat, and  in  Jessamine  County,  some  ten 
miles  from  Lexington,  built  a  home  that  lin- 
gers in  the  mind  like  some  picture  of  the  imag- 
ination. It  was  a  villa-like  place,  a  cluster  of 
rustic  cottages,  with  a  great  park  laid  out  in 
the  style  of  Old  World  landscape-gardening. 
There  were  artificial  rivers  spanned  by  bridges, 
and  lakes  with  islands  crowned  by  temples. 
There  were  terraces  and  retired  alcoves,  and 
winding  ways  cut  through  flowering  thickets. 
A  fortune  was  spent  on  the  grounds ;  a  retinue 
of  servants  was  employed  in  nurturing  their 
beauty.  The  dining  -  room,  wainscoted  with 
walnut  and  relieved  by  deep  window  -  seats, 
was  rich  with  the  family  service  of  silver  and 
glass ;  on  the  walls  of  other  rooms  hung  fam- 
ily portraits  by  Thomas  Hudson  and  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds.  Two  days  in  the  week  were  ap- 
pointed for  formal  receptions.  There  Jackson 
and  Monroe  and  Taylor  were  entertained ; 
there  Aaron  Burr  was  held  for  a  time  under 
arrest;  there  the  old  school  showed  itself  in 
buckles  and  knee-breeches,  and  rode  abroad  in 
a  yellow  chariot  with  outriders  in  blue  cloth 
and  silver  buttons. 

Near  Lexington  may  be  found  a  further  not- 
195 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue- Grass 

able  example  of  early  architecture  in  the  Todd 
homestead,  the  oldest  house  in  the  region,  built 
by  the  brother  of  John  Todd,  who  was  Govern- 
or of  Kentucky  Territory,  including  Illinois. 
It  is  a  strong,  spacious  brick  structure  reared 
on  a  high  foundation  of  stone,  with  a  large, 
square  hall  and  square  rooms  in  suites,  con- 
nected by  double  doors.  To  the  last  century 
also  belongs  the  low,  irregular  pile  that  be- 
came the  Wickliffe,  and  later  the  Preston, 
house  in  Lexington— a  striking  example  of  the 
taste  then  prevalent  for  plain,  or  even  com- 
monplace, exteriors,  if  combined  with  interiors 
that  touched  the  imagination  with  the  sug- 
gestion of  something  stately  and  noble  and 
courtly. 

There  are  few  types  of  homes  erected  in  the 
last  century.  The  wonder  is  not  that  such 
places  exist,  but  that  they  should  have  been 
found  in  Kentucky  at  such  a  time.  For  society 
had  begun  as  the  purest  of  democracies.  Only 
a  little  while  ago  the  people  had  been  shut  up 
within  a  stockade.  Stress  of  peril  and  hardship 
had  levelled  the  elements  of  population  to  more 
than  a  democracy :  it  had  knit  them  together 
as  one  endangered  human  brotherhood.  Hence 
the  sudden,  fierce  flaring  up  of  sympathy  with 
the  French  Revolution;  hence  the  deep  re- 
echoing war  -  cry  of  Jacobin  emissaries.  But 
196 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

scarcely  had  the  wave  of  primitive  conquest 
flowed  over  the  land,  and  wealth  followed  in 
its  peaceful  wake,  before  life  fell  apart  into  the 
extremes  of  social  caste.  The  memories  of 
former  position,  the  influences  of  old  domestic 
habits  were  powerful  still ;  so  that,  before  a 
generation  passed,  Kentucky  society  gave 
proof  of  the  continuity  of  its  development 
from  Virginia.  The  region  of  the  James  Riv- 
er, so  rich  in  antique  homesteads,  began  to  re- 
new itself  in  the  region  of  the  blue-grass.  On 
a  new  and  larger  canvas  began  to  be  painted 
the  picture  of  shaded  lawns,  wide  portals,  broad 
staircases,  great  halls,  drawing-rooms,  and  din- 
ing-rooms, wainscoting,  carved  wood-work,  and 
waxed  hard- wood  floors.  In  came  a  few  yellow 
chariots,  morocco  -  lined,  and  drawn  by  four 
horses.  In  came  the  powder,  the  wigs,  and  the 
queues,  the  ruffled  shirts,  the  knee  -  breeches, 
the  glittering  buckles,  the  high-heeled  slippers, 
and  the  frosty  brocades.  Over  the  Alleghanies, 
in  slow-moving  wagons,  came  the  massive  ma- 
hogany furniture,  the  sunny  brasswork,  the  tall 
silver  candlesticks,  the  nervous  -  looking,  thin 
legged  little  pianos.  In  came  old  manners  and 
old  speech  and  old  prides :  the  very  Past  gath- 
ered together  its  household  gods  and  made  an 
exodus  into  the  Future. 
Without  due  regard  to  these  essential  facts 
197 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

the  social  system  of  the  State  must  ever  remain 
poorly  understood.  Hitherto  they  have  been 
but  little  considered.  To  the  popular  imagina- 
tion the  most  familiar  type  of  the  early  Kentuc- 
kian  is  that  of  the  fighter,  the  hunter,  the  rude, 
heroic  pioneer  and  his  no  less  heroic  wife  :  peo- 
ple who  left  all  things  behind  them  and  set 
their  faces  westward,  prepared  to  be  new  creat- 
ures if  such  they  could  become.  But  on  the 
dim  historic  background  are  the  stiff  figures  of 
another  type,  people  who  were  equally  bent  on 
being  old-fashioned  creatures  if  such  they  could 
remain.  Thus,  during  the  final  years  of  the 
last  century  and  the  first  quarter  of  the  present 
one,  Kentucky  life  was  richly  overlaid  with  an- 
cestral models.  Closely  studied,  the  elements 
of  population  by  the  close  of  this  period  some- 
what resembled  a  landed  gentry,  a  robust 
yeomanry,  a  white  tenantry,  and  a  black  peas- 
antry. It  was  only  by  degrees — by  the  dying 
out  of  the  fine  old  types  of  men  and  women, 
by  longer  absence  from  the  old  environment 
and  closer  contact  with  the  new — that  society 
lost  its  inherited  and  acquired  its  native  char- 
acteristics, or  became  less  Virginian  and  more 
Kentuckian.  Gradually,  also,  the  white  ten- 
antry waned  and  the  black  peasantry  waxed. 
The  aristocratic  spirit,  in  becoming  more  Ken- 
tuckian, unbent  somewhat  its  pride,  and  the 
198 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue- Grass 

democratic,  in  becoming  more  Kentuckian, 
took  on  a  pride  of  its  own ;  so  that  when  social 
life  culminated  with  the  first  half  -  century, 
there  had  been  produced  over  the  Blue-grass 
Region,  by  the  intermingling  of  the  two,  that 
widely  diffused  and  peculiar  type  which  may 
be  described  as  an  aristocratic  democracy,  or 
a  democratic  aristocracy,  according  to  one's 
choosing  of  a  phrase.  The  beginnings  of  Ken- 
tucky life  represented  not  simply  a  slow  devel- 
opment from  the  rudest  pioneer  conditions,  but 
also  a  direct  and  immediate  implantation  of 
the  best  of  long-established  social  forms.  And 
in  nowise  did  the  latter  embody  itself  more 
persuasively  and  lastingly  than  in  the  building 
of  costly  homes. 


Ill 


WITH  the  opening  of  the  present  cen- 
tury, that  taste  had  gone  on  develop- 
ing. A  specimen  of  early  architect- 
ure in  the  style  of  the  old  English  mansion 
is  to  be  found  in  "  Locust  Grove,"  a  massive 
and  enduring  structure — not  in  the  Blue-grass 
Region,  it  is  true,  but  several  miles  from 
Louisville — built  in  1800  for  Colonel  Croghan, 
brother-in-law  of  General  George  Rogers 
Clark  ;  and  still  another  remains  in  "  Spring 
Hill,"  in  Woodford  County,  the  home  of  Na- 
thaniel Hart,  who  had  been  a  boy  in  the  fort 
at  Boonesborough.  Until  recently  a  further 
representative,  though  remodelled  in  later 
times,  survived  in  the  Thompson  place  at 
"  Shawnee  Springs,"  in  Mercer  County. 

Consider  briefly  the  import  of  such  country 
homes  as  these  — "Traveller's  Rest,""Chau- 
mi^re,"  "Spring  Hill,"  and  "Shawnee  Springs." 
Built  remotely  here  and  there,  away  from  the 
villages  or  before  villages  were  formed,  in  a 
200 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue- Grass 

country  not  yet  traversed  by  limestone  high- 
ways or  even  by  lanes,  they,  and  such  as  they, 
were  the  beacon-lights,  many-windowed  and 
kind,  of  Kentucky  entertainment.  "Travel- 
ler's Rest "  was  on  the  great  line  of  emigra- 
tion from  Abingdon  through  Cumberland  Gap. 
Its  roof-tree  was  a  boon  of  universal  shelter, 
its  very  name  a  perpetual  invitation  to  all  the 
weary.  Long  after  the  country  became  thickly 
peopled  it,  and  such  places  as  it,  remained  the 
rallying-points  of  social  festivity  in  their  sev- 
eral counties,  or  drew  their  guests  from  re- 
moter regions.  They  brought  in  the  era  of 
hospitalities,  which  by-and-by  spread  through 
the  towns  and  over  the  land.  If  one  is  ever  to 
study  this  trait  as  it  flowered  to  perfection  in 
Kentucky  life,  one  must  look  for  it  in  the  so- 
ciety of  some  fifty  years  ago.  Then  horses 
were  kept  in  the  stables,  servants  were  kept 
in  the  halls.  Guests  came  uninvited,  unan- 
nounced; tables  were  regularly  set  for  sur- 
prises. "  Put  a  plate,"  said  an  old  Kentuckian 
of  the  time  with  a  large  family  connection — 
"always  put  a  plate  for  the  last  one  of  them 
down  to  the  youngest  grandchild."  What  a 
Kentuckian  would  have  thought  of  being 
asked  to  come  on  the  thirteenth  of  the  month 
and  to  leave  on  the  twentieth,  it  is  difficult  to 
imagine.  The  wedding-presents  of  brides  were 
20 1 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

not  only  jewels  and  silver  and  gold,  but  a 
round  of  balls.  The  people  were  laughed  at 
for  their  too  impetuous  civilities.  In  what- 
ever quarter  of  the  globe  they  should  hap- 
pen to  meet  for  the  hour  a  pleasing  stranger, 
they  would  say  in  parting,  "And  when  you 
come  to  Kentucky,  be  certain  to  come  to  my 
house." 

Yet  it  is  needful  to  discriminate,  in  speaking 
of  Kentucky  hospitality.  Universally  gracious 
towards  the  stranger,  and  quick  to  receive 
him  for  his  individual  worth,  within  the  State 
hospitality  ran  in  circles,  and  the  people  turned 
a  piercing  eye  on  one  another's  social  positions. 
If  in  no  other  material  aspect  did  they  em- 
body the  history  of  descent  so  sturdily  as  in 
the  building  of  homes,  in  no  other  trait  of 
home  life  did  they  reflect  this  more  clearly 
than  in  family  pride.  Hardly  a  little  town 
but  had  its  classes  that  never  mingled  ;  scarce 
a  rural  neighborhood  but  insisted  on  the  sanc- 
tity of  its  salt-cellar  and  the  gloss  of  its  ma- 
hogany. The  spirit  of  caste  was  somewhat 
Persian  in  its  gravity.  Now  the  Alleghanies 
were  its  background,  and  the  heroic  beginnings 
of  Kentucky  life  supplied  its  warrant ;  now  it 
overleaped  the  Alleghanies,  and  allied  itself  to 
the  memories  of  deeds  and  names  in  older 
States.  But  if  some  professed  to  look  down, 
202 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

none  professed  to  look  up.  Deference  to  an 
upper  class,  if  deference  existed,  was  secret 
and  resentful,  not  open  and  servile.  The  his- 
tory of  great  political  contests  in  the  State  is 
largely  the  victory  and  defeat  of  social  types. 
Herein  lies  a  difficulty :  you  touch  any  point 
of  Kentucky  life,  and  instantly  about  it  cluster 
antagonisms  and  contradictions.  The  false  is 
true  ;  the  true  is  false.  Society  was  aristo- 
cratic ;  it  was  democratic ;  it  was  neither ;  it 
was  both.  There  was  intense  family  pride,  and 
no  family  pride.  The  ancestral  sentiment  was 
weak,  and  it  was  strong.  To-day  you  will  dis- 
cover the  increasing  vogue  of  an  heraldica 
Kentuckiensis,  and  to-day  an  absolute  disre- 
gard of  a  distinguished  past.  One  tells  but 
partial  truths. 

Of  domestic  architecture  in  a  brief  and  gen- 
eral way  something  has  been  said.  The  pre- 
vailing influence  was  Virginian,  but  in  Lexing- 
ton and  elsewhere  may  be  observed  evidences 
of  French  ideas  in  the  glasswork  and  designs 
of  doors  and  windows,  in  rooms  grouped  around 
a  central  hall  with  arching  niches  and  alcoves ; 
for  models  made  their  way  from  New  Orleans 
as  well  as  from  the  East.  Out  in  the  country, 
however,  at  such  places  as  those  already  men- 
tioned, and  in  homes  nearer  town,  as  at  Ash- 
land, a  purely  English  taste  was  sometimes 
203 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

shown  for  woodland  parks  with  deer,  and,  what 
v/as  more  peculiarly  Kentuckian,  elk  and  buf- 
falo. This  taste,  once  so  conspicuous,  has 
never  become  extinct,  and  certainly  the  land- 
scape is  receptive  enough  to  all  such  stately 
purposes.  At  "  Spring  Hill  "  and  elsewhere, 
to-day,  one  may  stroll  through  woods  that  have 
kept  a  touch  of  their  native  wildness.  There 
was  the  English  love  of  lawns,  too,  with  a  low 
matted  green  turf  and  wide-spreading  shade- 
trees  above — elm  and  maple,  locust  and  poplar 
— the  English  fondness  for  a  home  half  hid- 
den with  evergreens  and  creepers  and  shrub- 
bery, to  be  approached  by  a  leafy  avenue,  a 
secluded  gate-way,  and  a  gravelled  drive ;  for 
highways  hardly  admit  to  the  heart  of  rural 
life  in  Kentucky,  and  way-side  homes,  to  be 
dusted  and  gazed  at  by  every  passer-by,  would 
little  accord  with  the  spirit  of  the  people.  This 
feeling  of  family  seclusion  and  completeness 
also  portrayed  itself  very  tenderly  in  the  cus- 
tom of  family  graveyards,  which  were  in  time 
to  be  replaced  by  the  democratic  cemetery ;  and 
no  one  has  ever  lingered  around  those  quiet 
spots  of  aged  and  drooping  cedars,  fast-fading 
violets,  and  perennial  myrtle,  without  being 
made  to  feel  that  they  grew  out  of  the  better 
heart  and  fostered  the  finer  senses. 
Another  evidence  of  culture  among  the  first 
204 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue- Grass 

generations  of  Kentuckians  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
private  collections  of  portraits,  among  which 
one  wanders  now  with  a  sort  of  stricken  feeling 
that  the  higher  life  of  Kentucky  in  this  regard 
never  went  beyond  its  early  promise.  Look 
into  the  meagre  history  of  native  art,  and  you 
will  discover  that  nearly  all  the  best  work 
belongs  to  this  early  time.  It  was  possible 
then  that  a  Kentuckian  could  give  up  law  and 
turn  to  painting.  Almost  in  the  wilderness 
Jouett  created  rich,  luminous,  startling  can- 
vases. Artists  came  from  older  States  to 
sojourn  and  to  work,  and  were  invited  or  sum- 
moned from  abroad.  Painting  was  taught  in 
Lexington  in  1800.  Well  for  Jouett,  perhaps, 
that  he  lived  when  he  did  ;  better  for  Hart, 
perhaps,  that  he  was  not  born  later ;  they 
might  have  run  for  Congress.  One  is  prone  to 
recur  time  and  again  to  this  period,  when  the 
ideals  of  Kentucky  life  were  still  wavering  or 
unformed,  and  when  there  was  the  greatest 
receptivity  to  outside  impressions.  Thinking 
of  social  life  as  it  was  developed,  say  in  and 
around  Lexington — of  artists  coming  and 
going,  of  the  statesmen,  the  lecturers,  the  law- 
yers, of  the  dignity  and  the  energy  of  charac- 
ter, of  the  intellectual  dinners — one  is  inclined 
to  liken  the  local  civilization  to  a  truncated 
cone,  to  a  thing  that  should  have  towered  to  a 
205 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

symmetric  apex,  but  somehow  has  never  risen 
very  high  above  a  sturdy  base. 

But  to  speak  broadly  of  home  life  after  it 
became  more  typically  Kentuckian,  and  after 
architecture  began  to  reflect  with  greater 
uniformity  the  character  of  the  people.  And 
here  one  can  find  material  comfort,  if  not  aes- 
thetic delight  ;  for  it  is  the  whole  picture  of 
human  life  in  the  Blue-grass  Region  that 
pleases.  Ride  east  and  west,  or  north  and 
south,  along  highway  or  by-way,  and  the  picture 
is  the  same.  One  almost  asks  for  relief  from 
the  monotony  of  a  merely  well-to-do  existence, 
almost  sighs  for  the  extremes  of  squalor  and 
splendor,  that  nowhere  may  be  seen,  and  that 
would  seem  out  of  place  if  anywhere  con- 
fronted. On,  and  on,  and  on  you  go,  seeing 
only  the  repetition  of  field  and  meadow,  wood 
and  lawn,  a  winding  stream,  an  artificial  pond, 
a  sunny  vineyard,  a  blooming  orchard,  a  stone- 
wall, a  hedge-row,  a  tobacco  barn,  a  warehouse, 
a  race-track,  cattle  under  the  trees,  sheep  on 
the  slopes,  swine  in  the  pools,  and,  half  hidden 
by  evergreens  and  shrubbery,  the  homelike, 
unpretentious  houses  that  crown  very  simply 
and  naturally  the  entire  picture  of  material 
prosperity.  They  strike  you  as  built  not  for 
their  own  sakes.  Few  will  offer  anything  that 
lays  hold  upon  the  memory,  unless  it  be  per- 
206 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

haps  a  front  portico  with  Doric,  Ionic,  or  Co- 
rinthian columns ;  for  the  typical  Kentuckian 
likes  to  go  into  his  house  through  a  classic 
entrance,  no  matter  what  inharmonious  things 
may  be  beyond ;  and  after  supper  on  summer 
evenings  nothing  fills  him  with  serener  comfort 
than  to  tilt  his  chair  back  against  a  classic  sup- 
port, as  he  smokes  a  pipe  and  argues  on  the 
immortality  of  a  pedigree. 

On  the  whole,  one  feels  that  nature  has  long 
waited  for  a  more  exquisite  sense  in  domestic 
architecture ;  that  the  immeasurable  possibili- 
ties of  delightful  landscape  have  gone  unrecog- 
nized or  wasted.  Too  often  there  is  in  form 
and  outline  no  harmony  with  the  spirit  of  the 
scenery,  and  there  is  dissonance  of  color — color 
which  makes  the  first  and  strongest  impres- 
sion. The  realm  of  taste  is  prevailingly  the 
realm  of  the  want  of  taste,  or  of  its  mere- 
tricious and  commonplace  violations.  Many 
of  the  houses  have  a  sort  of  featureless,  cold, 
insipid  ugliness,  and  interior  and  exterior  deco- 
rations are  apt  to  go  for  nothing  or  for  some- 
thing worse.  You  repeat  that  nature  awaits 
more  art,  since  she  made  the  land  so  kind  to 
beauty ;  for  no  transformation  of  a  rude,  un- 
genial  landscape  is  needed.  The  earth  does 
not  require  to  be  trimmed  and  combed  and 
perfumed.  The  airy  vistas  and  delicate  slopes 
207 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

are  ready-made,  the  park-like  woodlands  invite, 
the  tender,  clinging  children  of  the  summer, 
the  deep,  echoless  repose  of  the  whole  land,  all 
ask  that  art  be  laid  on  every  undulation  and 
stored  in  every  nook.  And  there  are  days  with 
such  Arcadian  colors  in  air  and  cloud  and  sky 
— days  with  such  panoramas  of  calm,  sweet 
pastoral  groups  and  harmonies  below,  such 
rippling  and  flashing  of  waters  through  green 
underlights  and  golden  interspaces,  that  the 
shy,  coy  spirit  of  beauty  seems  to  be  wandering 
half  sadly  abroad  and  shunning  all  the  haunts 
of  man. 

But  little  agricultural  towns  are  not  art-cen- 
tres. Of  itself  rural  life  does  not  develop 
aesthetic  perceptions,  and  the  last,  most  difficult 
thing  to  bring  into  the  house  is  this  shy,  elu- 
sive spirit  of  beauty.  The  Kentucky  woman 
has  perhaps  been  corrupted  in  childhood  by 
tasteless  surroundings.  Her  lovable  mission, 
the  creation  of  a  multitude  of  small,  lovely 
objects,  is  undertaken  feebly  and  blindly.  She 
may  not  know  how  to  create  beauty,  may  not 
know  what  beauty  is.  The  temperament  of  her 
lord,  too,  is  practical :  a  man  of  substance  and 
stomach,  sound  at  heart,  and  with  an  abiding 
sense  of  his  own  responsibility  and  impor- 
tance, honestly  insisting  on  sweet  butter  and 
new-laid  eggs,  home-made  bread  and  home- 
208 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

grown  mutton,  but  little  revelling  in  the  deli- 
cacies of  sensibility,  and  with  no  more  eye  for 
crimson  poppies  or  blue  corn  -  flowers  in  his 
house  than  amid  his  grain.  Many  a  Kentucky 
woman  would  make  her  home  beautiful  if  her 
husband  would  allow  her  to  do  it. 

Amid  a  rural  people,  also,  no  class  of  citizens 
is  more  influential  than  the  clergy,  who  go 
about  as  the  shepherds  of  the  right ;  and  with- 
out doubt  in  Kentucky,  as  elsewhere,  minis- 
terial ideals  have  wrought  their  effects  on  taste 
in  architecture.  Perhaps  it  is  well  to  state 
that  this  is  said  broadly,  and  particularly  of 
the  past.  The  Kentucky  preachers  during 
earlier  times  were  a  fiery,  zealous,  and  austere 
set,  proclaiming  that  this  world  was  not  a  home, 
but  wilderness  of  sin,  and  exhorting  their  peo- 
ple to  live  under  the  awful  shadow  of  Eter- 
nity. Beauty  in  every  material  form  was  a 
peril,  the  seductive  garment  of  the  devil.  Well- 
nigh  all  that  made  for  aesthetic  culture  was 
put  down,  and,  like  frost  on  venturesome  flow- 
ers, sermons  fell  on  beauty  in  dress,  entertain- 
ment, equipage,  houses,  church  architecture, 
music,  the  drama,  the  opera — everything.  The 
meek  young  spirit  was  led  to  the  creek  or 
pond,  and  perhaps  the  ice  was  broken  for  her 
baptism.  If,  as  she  sat  in  the  pew,  any  vision 
of  her  chaste  loveliness  reached  the  pulpit, 
o  209 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

back  came  the  warning  that  she  would  some 
day  turn  into  a  withered  hag,  and  must  in- 
evitably be  "  eaten  of  worms."  What  wonder 
if  the  sense  of  beauty  pined  or  went  astray 
and  found  itself  completely  avenged  in  the 
building  of  such  churches?  And  yet  there  is 
nothing  that  even  religion  more  surely  de- 
mands than  the  fostering  of  the  sense  of  beauty 
within  us,  and  through  this  also  we  work  tow- 
ards the  civilization  of  the  future. 


IV 


MANY  rural  homes  have  been  built  since 
the  war,  but  the  old  type  of  country 
•  life  has  vanished.  On  the  whole,  there 
has  been  a  strong  movement  of  population 
towards  the  towns,  rapidly  augmenting  their 
size.  Elements  of  showiness  and  freshness  have 
been  added  to  their  once  unobtrusive  archi- 
tecture. And,  in  particular,  that  art  move- 
ment and  sudden  quickening  of  the  love  of 
beauty  which  swept  over  this  country  a  few 
years  since  has  had  its  influence  here.  But  for 
the  most  part  the  newer  homes  are  like  the 
newer  homes  in  other  American  cities,  and  the 
style  of  interior  appointment  and  decoration 
has  few  native  characteristics.  As  a  rule  the 
people  love  the  country  life  less  than  of  yore, 
since  an  altered  social  system  has  deprived  it 
of  much  leisure,  and  has  added  hardships.  The 
Kentuckian  does  not  regard  it  as  part  of  his 
mission  in  life  to  feed  fodder  to  stock;  and 
servants  are  hard  to  get,  the  colored  ladies  and 

211 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

gentlemen  having  developed  a  taste  for  urban 
society. 

What  is  to  be  the  future  of  the  Blue-grass 
Region?  When  population  becomes  denser 
and  the  pressure  is  felt  in  every  neighborhood, 
who  will  possess  it  ?  One  seems  to  see  in  cer- 
tain tendencies  of  American  life  the  probable 
answer  to  this  question.  The  small  farmer 
will  be  bought  out,  and  will  disappear.  Es- 
tates will  gro.w  fewer  and  larger.  The  whole 
land  will  pass  into  the  hands  of  the  rich,  being 
too  precious  for  the  poor  to  own.  Already 
here  and  there  one  notes  the  disposition  to 
create  vast  domains  by  the  slow  swallowing 
up  of  contiguous  small  ones.  Consider  in  this 
connection  the  taste  already  shown  by  the  rich 
American  in  certain  parts  of  the  United  States 
to  found  a  country-place  in  the  style  of  an 
English  lord.  Consider,  too,  that  the  landscape 
is  much  like  the  loveliest  of  rural  England; 
that  the  trees,  the  grass,  the  sculpture  of  the 
scenery  are  such  as  make  the  perfect  beauty 
of  a  park;  that  the  fox,  the  bob -white,  the 
thoroughbred,  and  the  deer  are  indigenous. 
Apparently,  therefore,  one  can  foresee  the  dis- 
tant time  when  this  will  become  the  region  of 
splendid  homes  and  estates  that  will  nourish 
a  taste  for  out-door  sports  and  offer  an  escape 
from  the  too-wearying  cities.     On  the  other 

212     . 


Homesteads  of  the  Blue-Grass 

hand,  a  powerful  and  ever-growing  interest  is 
that  of  the  horse,  racer  or  trotter.  He  brings 
into  the  State  his  increasing  capital,  his  types 
of  men.  Year  after  year  he  buys  farms,  and 
lays  out  tracks,  and  builds  stables,  and  edits 
journals,  and  turns  agriculture  into  grazing. 
In  time  the  Blue -grass  Region  may  become 
the  Yorkshire  of  America. 

But  let  the  future  have  its  own.  The  coun- 
try will  become  theirs  who  deserve  it,  whether 
they  build  palaces  or  barns.  Only  one  hopes 
that  when  the  old  homesteads  have  been  torn 
down  or  have  fallen  into  ruins,  the  tradition 
may  still  run  that  they,  too,  had  their  day  and 
deserved  their  page  of  history. 


THROUGH   CUMBERLAND  GAP 
ON   HORSEBACK 


I 


FRESH  fields  lay  before  us  that  summer  of 
1885.  We  had  left  the  rich,  rolling  plains 
of  the  Blue-grass  Region  in  central  Ken- 
tucky and  set  our  faces  towards  the  great  Ap- 
palachian uplift  on  the  south-eastern  border  of 
the  State.  There  Cumberland  Gap,  that  high- 
swung  gateway  through  the  mountain,  abides 
as  a  landmark  of  what  Nature  can  do  when  she 
wishes  to  give  an  opportunity  to  the  human 
race  in  its  migrations  and  discoveries,  without 
surrendering  control  of  its  liberty  and  its  fate. 
It  can  never  be  too  clearly  understood  by  those 
who  are  wont  to  speak  of  "  the  Kentuckians  " 
that  this  State  has  within  its  boundaries  two 
entirely  distinct  elements  of  population — ele- 
ments distinct  in  England  before  they  came 
hither,  distinct  during  more  than  a  century  of 
residence  here,  and  distinct  now  in  all  that  goes 
to  constitute  a  separate  community — occupa- 
tions, manners  and  customs,  dress,  views  of  life, 
civilization.  It  is  but  a  short  distance  from  the 
217 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

blue-grass  country  to  the  eastern  mountains  ; 
but  in  traversing  it  you  detach  yourself  from 
all  that  you  have  ever  experienced,  and  take  up 
the  history  of  English-speaking  men  and  wom- 
en at  the  point  it  had  reached  a  hundred  or  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago. 

Leaving  Lexington,  then,  which  is  in  the 
midst  of  the  blue-grass  plateau,  we  were  come 
to  Burnside,  where  begin  the  navigable  waters 
of  the  Cumberland  River,  and  the  foot-hills  of 
the  Cumberland  Mountains. 

Burnside  is  not  merely  a  station,  but  a  moun- 
tain watering-place.  The  water  is  mostly  in 
the  bed  of  the  river.  We  had  come  hither  to  get 
horses  and  saddle-bags,  but  to  no  purpose.  The 
hotel  was  a  sort  of  transition  point  between  the 
civilization  we  had  left  and  the  primitive  society 
we  were  to  enter.  On  the  veranda  were  some 
distinctly  modern  and  conventional  red  chairs ; 
but  a  green  and  yellow  gourd-vine,  carefully 
trained  so  as  to  shut  out  the  landscape,  was  a 
genuine  bit  of  local  color.  Under  the  fine 
beeches  in  the  yard  was  swung  a  hammock,  but 
it  was  made  of  boards  braced  between  ropes, 
and  was  covered  with  a  weather-stained  piece 
of  tarpaulin.  There  were  electric  bells  in  the 
house  that  did  not  electrify  ;  and  near  the  front 
entrance  three  barrels  of  Irish  potatoes,  with 
the  tops  off,  spoke  for  themselves  in  the  ab- 
218 


OLD   FERRY   AT   POINT   BURNSIDE 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

sence  of  the  bill  of  fare.  After  supper,  the  cook, 
a  tall,  blue-eyed,  white  fellow,  walked  into  my 
room  without  explanation,  and  carried  away  his 
guitar,  showing  that  he  had  been  wont  to  set  his 
sighs  to  music  in  that  quarter  of  the  premises. 
The  moon  hung  in  that  part  of  the  heavens,  and 
no  doubt  ogled  him  into  many  a  midnight  fren- 
zy. Sitting  under  a  beech-tree  in  the  morning,  I 
had  watched  a  child  from  some  city,  dressed 
in  white  and  wearing  a  blue  ribbon  around  her 
goldenish  hair,  amuse  herself  by  rolling  old  bar- 
rels (potato  barrels  probably,  and  ^he  may  have 
had  a  motive)  down  the  hill-side  and  seeing 
them  dashed  to  pieces  on  the  railway  track  be- 
low. By-and-by  some  of  the  staves  of  one  fell 
in,  the  child  tumbled  in  also,  and  they  all  rolled 
over  together.  Upon  the  whole,  it  was  an  odd 
overlapping  of  two  worlds.  When  the  railway 
was  first  opened  through  this  region  a  young 
man  established  a  fruit  store  at  one  of  the  sta- 
tions, and  as  part  of  his  stock  laid  in  a  bunch 
of  bananas.  One  day  a  mountaineer  entered. 
Arrangements  generally  struck  him  with  sur- 
prise, but  everything  else  was  soon  forgotten 
in  an  adhesive  contemplation  of  that  mighty 
aggregation  of  fruit.  Finally  he  turned  away 
with  this  comment :  "  Damn  me  if  them  ain't 
the  damnedest  beans  /  ever  seen  !" 

The  scenery  around  Burnside  is  beautiful, 
219 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

and  the  climate  bracing.  In  the  valleys  was 
formerly  a  fine  growth  of  walnut,  but  the  prin- 
cipal timbers  now  are  oak,  ash,  and  sycamore, 
with  yellow  pine.  I  heard  of  a  wonderful  wal- 
nut tree  formerly  standing,  by  hiring  vehicles 
to  go  and  see  which  the  owner  of  a  livery-stable 
made  three  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  Six  hun- 
dred were  offered  for  it  on  the  spot.  The  hills 
are  filled  with  the  mountain  limestone — that 
Kentucky  oolite  of  which  the  new  Cotton  Ex- 
change in  New  York  is  built.  Here  was  Burn- 
side's  depot  of  supplies  during  the  war,  and 
here  passed  the  great  road — made  in  part  a  cor- 
duroy road  at  his  order — from  Somerset,  Ken- 
tucky, to  Jacksborough,  over  which  countless 
stores  were  taken  from  central  Kentucky  and 
regions  farther  north  into  Tennessee.  Supplies 
were  brought  up  the  river  in  small  steamboats 
or  overland  in  wagons,  and  when  the  road  grew 
impassable,  pack-mules  were  used.  Sad  sights 
there  were  in  those  sad  days :  the  carcasses  of 
animals  at  short  intervals  from  here  to  Knox- 
ville,  and  now  and  then  a  mule  sunk  up  to  his 
body  in  mire,  and  abandoned,  with  his  pack  on, 
to  die.  Here  were  batteries  planted  and  rifle- 
pits  dug,  the  vestiges  of  which  yet  remain  ;  but 
where  the  forest  timbers  were  then  cut  down  a 
vigorous  new  growth  has  long  been  reclaiming 
the  earth  to  native  wildness,  and  altogether  the 
220 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

aspect  of  the  place  is  peaceful  and  serene.  Doves 
were  flying  in  and  out  of  the  corn-fields  on  the 
hill-sides ;  there  were  green  stretches  in  the  val- 
leys where  cattle  were  grazing  ;  and  these,  to- 
gether with  a  single  limestone  road  that  wound 
upward  over  a  distant  ridge,  recalled  the  richer 
scenes  of  the  blue-grass  lands. 

Assured  that  we  should  find  horsey  and  sad- 
dle-bags at  Cumberland  Falls,  we  left  Burnside 
in  the  afternoon,  and  were  soon  set  down  at  a 
station  some  fifteen  miles  farther  along,  where 
a  hack  conveyed  us  to  another  of  those  moun- 
tain watering-places  that  are  being  opened  up 
in  various  parts  of  eastern  Kentucky  for  the 
enjoyment  of  a  people  that  has  never  cared  to 
frequent  in  large  numbers  the  Atlantic  sea- 
board. 

As  we  drove  on,  the  darkness  was  falling, 
and  the  scenery  along  the  road  grew  wilder 
and  grander.  A  terrific  storm  had  swept  over 
these  heights,  and  the  great  trees  lay  uptorn 
and  prostrate  in  every  direction,  or  reeled  and 
fell  against  each  other  like  drunken  giants — a 
scene  of  fearful  elemental  violence.  On  the 
summits  one  sees  the  tan  -  bark  oak  ;  lower 
down,  the  white  oak  ;  and  lower  yet,  fine  speci- 
mens of  yellow  poplar ;  while  from  the  val- 
leys to  the  crests  is  a  dense  and  varied  under- 
growth, save  where  the  ground  has  been  burned 

221 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

over,  year  after  year,  to  kill  it  out  and  improve 
the  grazing.  Twenty  miles  to  the  south-east 
we  had  seen  through  the  pale -tinted  air  the 
waving  line  of  Jellico  Mountains  in  Tennessee. 
Away  to  the  north  lay  the  Beaver  Creek  and 
the  lower  Cumberland,  while  in  front  of  us  rose 
the  craggy,  scowling  face  of  Anvil  Rock,  com- 
manding a  view  of  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  and 
Virginia.  The  utter  silence  and  heart-oppress- 
ing repose  of  primeval  nature  was  around  us. 
The  stark  white  and  gray  trunks  of  the  im- 
memorial forest  dead  linked  us  to  an  inviolable 
past.  The  air  seemed  to  blow  upon  us  from 
over  regions  illimitable  and  unexplored,  and  to 
be  fraught  with  unutterable  suggestions.  The 
full -moon  swung  itself  aloft  over  the  sharp 
touchings  of  the  green  with  spectral  pallor ; 
and  the  evening  -  star  stood  lustrous  on  the 
western  horizon  in  depths  of  blue  as  cold  as  a 
sky  of  Landseer,  except  where  brushed  by 
tremulous  shadows  of  rose  on  the  verge  of  the 
sunlit  world.  A  bat  wheeled  upward  in  fan- 
tastic curves  out  of  his  undiscovered  glade. 
And  the  soft  tinkle  of  a  single  cow-bell  far  be- 
low marked  the  invisible  spot  of  some  lonely 
human  habitation.  By-and-by  we  lost  sight  of 
the  heavens  altogether,  so  dense  and  interlaced 
the  forest.  The  descent  of  the  hack  appeared 
to  be  into  a  steep  abyss  of  gloom  ;  then  all  at 

222 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

once  we  broke  from  the  edge  of  the  woods  into 
a  flood  of  moonlight ;  at  our  feet  were  the 
whirling,  foaming  rapids  of  the  river ;  in  our 
ears  was  the  roar  of  the  cataract,  where  the 
bow-crowned  mist  rose  and  floated  upward  and 
away  in  long  trailing  shapes  of  ethereal  light- 
ness. 

The  Cumberland  River  throws  itself  over 
the  rocks  here  with  a  fall  of  seventy  feet,  or  a 
perpendicular  descent  of  sixty-two,  making  a 
mimic  but  beautiful  Niagara.  Just  below,  at 
Eagle  Falls,  it  drops  over  its  precipice  in  a 
lawny  cascade.  The  roar  of  the  cataract,  un- 
der favorable  conditions,  may  be  heard  up  and 
down  stream  a  distance  of  ten  or  twelve  miles. 
You  will  not  find  in  mountainous  Kentucky  a 
more  picturesque  spot. 

While  here,  we  had  occasion  to  extend  our 
acquaintance  with  native  types.  Two  young 
men  came  to  the  hotel,  bringing  a  bag  of  small, 
hard  peaches  to  sell.  Slim,  slab-sided,  stomach- 
less,  and  serene,  mild,  and  melancholy,  they 
might  have  been  lotos-eaters,  only  the  sugges- 
tion of  poetry  was  wanting.  Their  unutter- 
able content  came  not  from  the  lotos,  but 
from  their  digestion.  If  they  could  sell  their 
peaches,  they  would  be  happy  ;  if  not,  they 
would  be  happy.  What  they  could  not  sell, 
they  could  as  well  eat ;  and  since  no  bargain 
223 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

was  made  on  this  occasion,  they  took  chairs  on 
the  hotel  veranda,  opened  the  bag,  and  fell  to. 
I  talked  with  the  Benjamin  of  his  tribe : 

"  Is  that  a  good  'coon  dog  ?" 

"  A  mighty  good  'coon  dog.     I  hain't  never 
seed  him  whipped  by  a  varmint  yit." 

"  Are  there  many  'coons  in  this  country  ?" 

"  Several  'coons." 

"  Is  this  a  good  year  for  'coons  ?" 

"  A  mighty  good  year  for  'coons.  The  woods 
is  full  o'  varmints." 

"  Do  'coons  eat  corn  ?" 

"  'Coons  is  bad  as  hogs  on  corn,  when  they 
git  tuk  to  it." 

**  Are  there  many  wild  turkeys  in  this  coun- 
try ?" 

"  Several  wild  turkeys." 

"  Have  you  ever  caught  many  'coons  ?" 

"  I've  cotched  high  as  five  'coons  out  o*  one 
tree." 

"  Are  there  many  foxes  in  this  country  ?" 

"  Several  foxes." 

"  What's  the  best  way  to  cook  a  'coon  ?" 

"Ketch  him  and  parbile  him,  and  then  put 
him  in  cold  water  and  soak  him,  and  then  put 
him  in  and  bake  him." 

"  Are  there  many  hounds  in  this  country  ? " 

"  Several  hounds." 

Here,  among  other  discoveries,  was  a  lin- 
224 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

guistic  one — the  use  of  "  several "  in  the  sense 
of  a  great  many,  probably  an  innumerable 
multitude,  as  in  the  case  of  the  'coons. 

They  hung  around  the  hotel  for  hours,  as 
beings  utterly  exempt  from  all  the  obligations 
and  other  phenomena  of  time. 

"Why  should  we  only  toil,  the  roof  and  crown  of 

things.?" 

The  guide  bespoken  the  evening  before  had 
made  arrangements  for  our  ride  of  some  eigh- 
teen miles — was  it  not  forty? — to  Williamsburg, 
and  in  the  afternoon  made  his  appearance  with 
three  horses.  Of  these  one  was  a  mule,  with 
a  strong  leaning  towards  his  father's  family. 
Of  the  three  saddles  one  was  a  side-saddle,  and 
another  was  an  army  saddle  with  refugee  stir- 
rups. The  three  beasts  wore  among  them  some 
seven  shoes.  My  own  mincing  jade  had  none. 
Her  name  must  have  been  Helen  of  Troy 
(all  horses  are  named  in  Kentucky),  so  long 
ago  had  her  great  beauty  disappeared.  She 
partook  with  me  of  the  terror  which  her  own 
movements  inspired  ;  and  if  there  ever  was  a 
well-defined  case  in  which  the  man  should  have 
carried  the  beast,  this  was  the  one.  While  on 
her  back  I  occasionally  apologized  for  the  in- 
justice of  riding  her  by  handing  her  some  sour 
p  225 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

apples,  the  like  of  which  she  appeared  never  to 
have  tasted  before,  just  as  it  was  told  me  she 
had  never  known  the  luxury  of  wearing  shoes. 
It  is  often  true  that  the  owner  of  a  horse  in 
this  region  is  too  poor  or  too  mean  to  have  it 
shod. 

Our  route  from  Cumberland  Falls  lay 
through  what  is  called  "  Little  Texas,"  in 
Whitley  County — a  wilderness  some  twenty 
miles  square.  I  say  route,  because  there  was 
not  always  a  road  ;  but  for  the  guide,  there 
would  not  always  have  been  a  direction.  Rough 
as  the  country  appears  to  one  riding  through 
it  on  horseback,  it  is  truly  called  ''  flat  woods 
country  " ;  and  viewed  from  Jellico  Mountains, 
whence  the  local  elevations  are  of  no  account, 
it  looks  like  one  vast  sweep  of  sloping,  densely 
wooded  land.  Here  one  may  see  noble  speci- 
mens of  yellow  poplar  in  the  deeper  soil  at  the 
head  of  the  ravines ;  pin-oak,  and  gum  and 
willow,  and  the  rarely  beautiful  wild-cucumber. 
Along  the  streams  in  the  lowlands  blooms  the 
wild  calacanthus,  filling  the  air  with  fragrance, 
and  here  in  season  the  wild  camellia  throws 
open  its  white  and  purple  splendors. 

It  was  not  until  we  had  passed  out  of  "  Lit- 
tle Texas"  and  reached  Williamsburg,  had  gone 
thence  to  Barbourville,  the  county-seat  of  the 
adjoining  county  of  Knox,  and  thence  again 
226 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

into  Bell  County,  that  we  stopped  at  an  old 
way-side  inn  on  the  Wilderness  road  from  Ken- 
tucky through  Cumberland  Gap.  Around  us 
were  the  mountains — around  us  the  mountain- 
eers whom  we  wished  to  study. 


II 


STRAIGHT,  slim,  angular,  white  bodies ; 
average  or  even  unusual  stature,  without 
great  muscular  robustness  ;  features  reg- 
ular and  colorless  ;  unanimated  but  intelligent ; 
in  the  men  sometimes  fierce  ;  in  the  women 
often  sad  ;  among  the  latter  occasional  beauty 
of  a  pure  Greek  type  ;  a  manner  shy  and  defer- 
ential, but  kind  and  fearless  ;  eyes  with  a  slow, 
long  look  of  mild  inquiry,  or  of  general  listless- 
ness,  or  of  unconscious  and  unaccountable 
melancholy  ;  the  key  of  life  a  low  minor  strain, 
losing  itself  in  reverie  ;  voices  monotonous  in 
intonation  ;  movements  uninformed  by  ner- 
vousness— these  are  characteristics  of  the  Ken- 
tucky mountaineers.  Living  to-day  as  their 
forefathers  lived  a  hundred  years  ago  ;  hearing 
little  of  the  world,  caring  nothing  for  it  ;  re- 
sponding feebly  to  the  influences  of  civilization 
near  the  highways  of  travel  in  and  around  the 
towns,  and  latterly  along  the  lines  of  railway 
communication  ;  but  sure  to  live  here,  if  unin- 
228 


9-'     ,     '     *     »•• 


',-',-,       -..«»• 


NATIVE  TYPES 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

vaded  and  unaroused,  in  the  same  condition 
for  a  hundred  years  to  come  ;  lacking  the  spirit 
of  development  from  within ;  devoid  of  sympa- 
thy with  that  boundless  and  ungovernable 
activity  which  is  carrying  the  Saxon  race  in 
America  from  one  state  to  another,  whether 
better  or  worse.  The  origin  of  these  people, 
the  relation  they  sustain  to  the  different  pop- 
ulation of  the  central  Kentucky  region — in 
fine,  an  account  of  them  from  the  date  of  their 
settling  in  these  mountains  to  the  present 
time,  when,  as  it  seems,  they  are  on  the  point 
of  losing  their  isolation,  and  with  it  their  dis- 
tinctiveness— would  imprison  phases  of  life  and 
character  valuable  alike  to  the  special  history 
of  this  country  and  to  the  general  history  of 
the  human  mind. 

The  land  in  these  mountains  is  all  claimed, 
but  it  is  probably  not  all  covered  by  actual 
patent.  As  evidence,  a  company  has  been 
formed  to  speculate  in  lands  not  secured  by 
title.  The  old  careless  way  of  marking  off 
boundaries  by  going  from  tree  to  tree,  by 
partly  surveying  and  partly  guessing,  explains 
the  present  uncertainty.  Many  own  land  by 
right  of  occupancy,  there  being  no  other  claim. 
The  great  body  of  the  people  live  on  and  cul- 
tivate little  patches  which  they  either  own,  or 
hold  free,  or  pay  rent  for  with  a  third  of  the 
229 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

crop.  These  not  unfrequently  get  together 
and  trade  farms  as  they  would  horses,  no  deed 
being  executed.  There  is  among  them  a  mobile 
element — squatters — who  make  a  hill-side  clear- 
ing and  live  on  it  as  long  as  it  remains  produc- 
tive ;  then  they  move  elsewhere.  This  accounts 
for  the  presence  throughout  the  country  of 
abandoned  cabins,  around  which  a  new  forest 
growth  is  springing  up.  Leaving  out  of  con- 
sideration the  few  instances  of  substantial  pros- 
perity, the  most  of  the  people  are  abjectly  poor, 
and  they  appear  to  have  no  sense  of  accumula- 
tion. The  main  crops  raised  are  corn  and 
potatoes.  In  the  scant  gardens  will  be  seen 
patches  of  cotton,  sorghum,  and  tobacco  ;  flax 
also,  though  less  than  formerly.  Many  make 
insufficient  preparation  for  winter,  laying  up 
no  meat,  but  buying  a  piece  of  bacon  now  and 
then,  and  paying  for  it  with  work.  In  some 
regions  the  great  problem  of  life  is  to  raise 
two  dollars  and  a  half  during  the  year  for 
county  taxes.  Being  pauper  counties,  they 
are  exempt  from  State  taxation.  Jury  fees 
are  highly  esteemed  and  much  sought  after. 
The  manufacture  of  illicit  mountain  whiskey 
— "  moonshine  "—was  formerly,  as  it  is  now,  a 
considerable  source  of  revenue;  and  a  desper- 
ate sub-source  of  revenue  from  the  same  busi- 
ness has  been  the  betrayal  of  its  hidden  places. 
230 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

There  is  nothing  harder  or  more  dangerous  to 
find  now  in  the  mountains  than  a  still. 

Formerly  digging  "sang,"  as  they  call  gin- 
seng, was  a  general  occupation.  For  this 
China  was  a  great  market.  It  has  nearly  all 
been  dug  out  except  in  the  wildest  parts  of  the 
country,  where  entire  families  may  still  be 
seen  "out  sangin'."  They  took  it  into  the 
towns  in  bags,  selling  it  at  a  dollar  and  ten 
cents — perhaps  a  dollar  and  a  half — a  pound. 
This  was  mainly  the  labor  of  the  women  and 
the  children,  who  went  to  work  barefooted, 
amid  briers  and  chestnut  burs,  copperheads 
and  rattlesnakes.  Indeed,  the  women  prefer 
to  go  barefooted,  finding  shoes  a  trouble  and 
constraint.  It  was  a  sad  day  for  the  people 
when  the  "  sang  "  grew  scarce.  A  few  years 
ago  one  of  the  counties  was  nearly  depopu- 
lated in  consequence  of  a  great  exodus  into 
Arkansas,  whence  had  come  the  news  that 
"sang"  was  plentiful.  Not  long  since,  during 
a  season  of  scarcity  in  corn,  a  local  store-keeper 
told  the  people  of  a  county  to  go  out  and 
gather  all  the  mandrake  or  "  May-apple  "  root 
they  could  find.  At  first  only  the  women  and 
children  went  to  work,  the  men  holding  back 
with  ridicule.  By-and-by  they  also  took  part, 
and  that  year  some  fifteen  tons  were  gathered, 
at  three  cents  a  pound,  and  the  whole  country 
231 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

thus  got  its  seed-corn.  Wild  ginger  was  an- 
other root  formerly  much  dug  ;  also  to  less  ex- 
tent "  golden-seal "  and  "  bloodroot."  The  sale 
of  feathers  from  a  few  precarious  geese  helps 
to  eke  out  subsistence.  Their  methods  of 
agriculture — if  methods  they  may  be  sty-led — 
are  the  most  primitive.  Ploughing  is  com- 
monly done  with  a  "bull-tongue,"  an  imple- 
ment hardly  more  than  a  sharpened  stick  with 
a  metal  rim ;  this  is  often  drawn  by  an  ox,  or 
a  half -yoke.  But  one  may  see  women  plough- 
ing with  two  oxen.  Traces  are  made  of  hickory 
or  papaw,  as  also  are  bed-cords.  Ropes  are 
made  of  lynn  bark.  In  some  counties  there  is 
not  so  much  as  a  fanning-mill,  grain  being 
winnowed  by  pouring  it  from  basket  to  basket, 
after  having  been  threshed  with  a  flail,  which 
is  a  hickory  withe  some  seven  feet  long.  Their 
threshing-floor  is  a  clean  place  on  the  ground, 
and  they  take  up  grain,  gravel, and  dirt  together, 
not  knowing,  or  not  caring  for,  the  use  of  a  sieve. 
The  grain  is  ground  at  their  homes  in  a  hand 
tub-mill,  or  one  made  by  setting  the  nether 
millstone  in  a  bee-gum,  or  by  cutting  a  hole  in 
a  puncheon-log  and  sinking  the  stone  into  it. 
There  are,  however,  other  kinds  of  mills  :  the 
primitive  little  water-mill,  which  may  be  con- 
sidered almost  characteristic  of  this  region ;  in 
a  few  places  improved  water-mills,  and  small 
232 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

steam-mills.  It  is  the  country  of  mills,  farm- 
houses being  furnished  with  one  as  with  coffee- 
pot or  spinning-wheel.  A  simpler  way  of 
preparing  corn  for  bread  than  by  even  the 
hand-mill  is  used  in  the  late  summer  and  early 
autumn,  while  the  grain  is  too  hard  for  eating 
as  roasting-ears,  and  too  soft  to  be  ground  in 
a  mill.  On  a  board  is  tacked  a  piece  of  tin 
through  which  holes  have  been  punched  from 
the  under  side,  and  over  this  tin  the  ears  are 
rubbed,  producing  a  coarse  meal,  of  which 
"  gritted  bread  "  is  made.  Much  pleasure  and 
much  health  they  get  from  their  "gritted 
bread,"  which  is  sweet  and  wholesome  for  a 
hungry  man. 

Where  civilization  has  touched  on  the  high- 
ways and  the  few  improved  mills  have  been 
erected,  one  may  see  women  going  to  mill 
with  their  scant  sacks  of  grain,  riding  on  a 
jack,  a  jennet,  or  a  bridled  ox.  But  this  is  not 
so  bad  as  in  North  Carolina,  where,  Europa- 
like,  they  ride  on  bulls. 

Aside  from  such  occupations,  the  men  have 
nothing  to  do — a  little  work  in  the  spring,  and 
nine  months'  rest.  They  love  to  meet  at  the 
country  groceries  and  cross-roads,  to  shoot 
matches  for  beef,  turkeys,  or  liquor,  and  to 
gamble.  There  is  with  them  a  sort  of  annual 
succession  of  amusements.  In  its  season  they 
233 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

have  the  rage  for  pitching  horse-shoes,  the 
richer  ones  using  dollar  pieces.  In  conse- 
quence of  their  abundant  leisure,  the  loneli- 
ness of  the  mountains,  and  their  bravery  and 
vigor,  quarrels  are  frequent  and  feuds  deadly. 
Personal  enmities  soon  serve  to  array  entire 
families  in  an  attitude  of  implacable  hostility  ; 
and  in  the  course  of  time  relatives  and  friends 
take  sides,  and  a  war  of  extermination  ensues. 
The  special  origins  of  these  feuds  are  various  : 
blood  heated  and  temper  lost  under  the  influ- 
ence of  "  moonshine  ";  reporting  the  places  and 
manufacturers  of  this  ;  local  politics ;  the  survi- 
val of  resentments  engendered  during  the  Civil 
War.  These,  together  with  all  causes  that  lie 
in  the  passions  of  the  human  heart  and  spring 
from  the  constitution  of  all  human  society,  often 
make  the  remote  and  insulated  life  of  these 
people  turbulent,  reckless,  and  distressing. 
r  But  while  thus  bitter  and  cruel  towards  each 
other,  they  present  to  strangers  the  aspect  of 
a  polite,  kind,  unoffending,  and  most  hospita- 
ble race.  They  will  divide  with  you  shelter 
and  warmth  and  food,  however  scant,  and  will 
put  themselves  to  trouble  for  your  convenience 
with  an  unreckoning,  earnest  friendliness  and 
good -nature  that  is  touching  to  the  last  de- 
gree. No  sham,  no  pretence  ;  a  true  friend,  or 
an  open  enemy.  Of  late  they  have  had  much 
234 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

occasion  to  regard  new-comers  with  distrust, 
which,  once  aroused,  is  difficult  to  dispel ;  and 
now  they  will  wish  to  know  you  and  your  busi- 
ness before  treating  you  with  that  warmth 
which  they  are  only  too  glad  to  show. 

The  women  do  most  of  the  work.  From  the 
few  sheep,  running  wild,  which  the  farm  may 
own,  they  take  the  wool,  which  is  carded,  reeled, 
spun,  and  woven  into  fabrics  by  their  own  hands 
and  on  their  rude  implements.  One  or  two 
spinning-wheels  will  be  found  in  every  house. 
Cotton  from  their  little  patches  they  clean  by 
using  a  primitive  hand  cotton-gin.  Flax,  much 
spun  formerly,  is  now  less  used.  It  is  surpris- 
ing to  see  from  what  appliances  they  will  bring 
forth  exquisite  fabrics  :  garments  for  personal 
.wear,  bedclothes,  and  the  like.  When  they  can 
afford  it  they  make  carpets. 

They  have,  as  a  rule,  luxuriant  hair.  In 
some  counties  one  is  struck  by  the  purity  of 
the  Saxon  type,  and  their  faces  in  early  life 
are  often  handsome.  But  one  hears  that  in 
certain  localities  they  are  prone  to  lose  their 
teeth,  and  that  after  the  age  of  thirty-five  it 
is  a  rare  thing  to  see  a  woman  whose  teeth  are 
not  partly  or  wholly  wanting.  The  reason  is 
not  apparent.  They  appear  passionately  fond 
of  dress,  and  array  themselves  in  gay  colors 
and  in  jewelry  (pinchbeck),  if  their  worldly  es- 
235 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

tate  justifies  the  extravagance.  Oftener,  if 
young,  they  have  a  modest,  shy  air,  as  if  con- 
scious that  their  garb  is  not  decorous.  Whether 
married  or  unmarried,  they  show  much  natural 
diffidence.  It  is  told  that  in  remoter  districts 
of  the  mountains  they  are  not  allowed  to  sit  at 
the  table  with  the  male  members  of  the  house- 
hold, but  serve  them  as  in  ancient  societies. 
Commonly,  in  going  to  church,  the  men  ride 
and  carry  the  children,  while  the  women  walk. 
Dancing  in  some  regions  is  hardly  known,  but 
in  others  is  a  favorite  amusement,  and  in  its 
movements  men  and  women  show  grace.  The 
mountain  preachers  oppose  it  as  a  sin. 

Marriages  take  place  early.  They  are  a  fec- 
und race.  I  asked  them  time  and  again  to  fix 
upon  the  average  number  of  children  to  a  fam- 
ily, and  they  gave  as  the  result  seven.  In  case 
of  parental  opposition  to  wedlock,  the  lovers 
run  off.  There  is  among  the  people  a  low 
standard  of  morality  in  their  domestic  rela- 
tions, the  delicate  privacies  of  home  life  hav- 
ing little  appreciation  where  so  many  persons, 
without  regard  to  age  or  sex,  are  crowded  to- 
gether within  very  limited  quarters. 

The  dwellings  —  often  mere  cabins  with  a 

single  room  —  are  built  of  rough -hewn  logs, 

chinked  or  daubed,  though  not  always.     Often 

there  is  a  puncheon  floor  and  no  chamber  roof. 

236 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

One  of  these  mountaineers,  called  into  court  to 
testify  as  to  the  household  goods  of  a  defend- 
ant neighbor,  gave  in  as  the  inventory,  a  string 
of  pumpkins,  a  skillet  without  a  handle,  and 
"  a  wild  Bill."  "  A  wild  Bill  "  is  a  bed  made  by 
boring  auger  -  holes  into  a  log,  driving  sticks 
into  these,  and  overlaying  them  with  hickory 
bark  and  sedge-grass — a  favorite  couch.  The 
low  chimneys,  made  usually  of  laths  daubed, 
are  so  low  that  the  saying,  inelegant  though 
true,  is  current,  that  you  may  sit  by  the  fire 
inside  and  spit  out  over  the  top.  The  cracks 
in  the  walls  are  often  large  enough  to  give  in- 
gress and  egress  to  child  or  dog.  Even  cellars 
are  little  known,  potatoes  sometimes  being  kept 
during  winter  in  a  hole  dug  under  the  hearth- 
stone. More  frequently  a  trap  -  door  is  made 
through  the  plank  flooring  in  the  middle  of  the 
room,  and  in  a  hole  beneath  are  put  potatoes, 
and,  in  case  of  wealth,  jellies  and  preserves. 
Despite  the  wretchedness  of  their  habitations 
and  the  rigors  of  mountain  climate,  they  do  not 
suffer  with  cold,  and  one  may  see  them  out  in 
snow  knee-deep  clad  in  low  brogans,  and  nothing 
heavier  than  a  jeans  coat  and  hunting  shirt. 

The  customary  beverage  is  coffee,  bitter  and 

black,  not  having  been   roasted  but  burned. 

All  drink  it,  from  the  youngest  up.     Another 

beverage  is  "mountain  tea,"  which   is   made 

237 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

from  the  sweet-scented  golden-rod  and  from 
winter-green — the  New  England  checkerberry. 
These  decoctions  they  mollify  with  home-made 
sorghum  molasses,  which  they  call "  long  sweet- 
ening," or  with  sugar,  which  by  contrast  is 
known  as  "  short  sweetening." 

Of  home  government  there  is  little  or  none, 
boys  especially  setting  aside  at  will  parental 
authority ;  but  a  sort  of  traditional  sense  of 
duty  and  decorum  restrains  them  by  its  silent 
power,  and  moulds  them  into  respect.  Chil- 
dren while  quite  young  are  often  plump  to 
roundness,  but  soon  grow  thin  and  white  and 
meagre  like  the  parents.  There  is  little  desire 
for  knowledge  or  education.  The  mountain 
schools  have  sometimes  less  than  half  a  dozen 
pupils  during  the  few  months  they  are  in  ses- 
sion. A  gentleman  who  wanted  a  coal  bank 
opened,  engaged  for  the  work  a  man  passing 
along  the  road.  Some  days  later  he  learned 
that  his  workman  was  a  school-teacher,  who, 
in  consideration  of  the  seventy-five  cents  a  day, 
had  dismissed  his  academy. 

Many,  allured  by  rumors  from  the  West, 
have  migrated  thither,  but  nearly  all  come 
back,  from  love  of  the  mountains,  from  indis- 
position to  cope  with  the  rush  and  vigor  and 
enterprise  of  frontier  life.  Theirs,  they  say,  is 
a  good  lazy  man's  home. 
238 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

Their  customs  respecting  the  dead  are  inter- 
esting. When  a  husband  dies  his  funeral  ser- 
mon is  not  preached,  but  the  death  of  the  wife 
is  awaited,  and  vice  versa.  Then  a  preacher 
is  sent  for,  friend  and  neighbor  called  in,  and 
the  respect  is  paid  both  together.  Often 
two  or  three  preachers  are  summoned,  and 
each  delivers  a  sermon.  More  peculiar  is  the 
custom  of  having  the  services  for  one  person 
repeated ;  so  that  the  dead  get  their  funerals 
preached  several  times,  months  and  years  after 
their  burial.  I  heard  of  the  pitiful  story  of 
two  sisters  who  had  their  mother's  funeral 
preached  once  every  summer  as  long  as  they 
lived.  You  may  engage  the  women  in  mourn- 
ful conversation  respecting  the  dead,  but  hard- 
ly the  men.  In  strange  contrast  with  this  re- 
gard for  ceremonial  observances  is  their  neglect 
of  the  graves  of  their  beloved,  which  they  do  not 
seem  at  all  to  visit  when  once  closed,  or  to  dec- 
orate with  those  symbols  of  affection  which  are 
the  common  indications  of  bereavement. 

Nothing  that  I  have  ever  seen  is  so  lonely, 
so  touching  in  its  neglect  and  wild,  irreparable 
solitude,  as  one  of  these  mountain  graveyards. 
On  some  knoll  under  a  clump  of  trees,  or  along 
some  hill-side  where  dense  oak-trees  make  a 
mid-day  gloom,  you  walk  amid  the  unknown, 
undistinguishable  dead.  Which  was  father 
239 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

and  which  mother,  where  are  lover  and  strick- 
en sweetheart,  whether  this  is  the  dust  of 
laughing  babe  or  crooning  grandam,  you  will 
never  know  :  no  foot  -  stones,  no  head  -  stones  ; 
sometimes  a  few  rough  rails  laid  around,  as 
you  would  make  a  little  pen  for  swine.  In 
places,  however,  one  sees  a  picket  -  fence  put 
up,  or  a  sort  of  shed  built  over. 

Traditions  and  folk  -  lore  among  them  are 
evanescent,  and  vary  widely  in  different  locali- 
ties. It  appears  that  in  part  they  are  sprung 
from  the  early  hunters  who  came  into  the 
mountains  when  game  was  abundant,  sport 
unfailing,  living  cheap.  Among  them  now  are 
still -hunters,  who  know  the  haunts  of  bear 
and  deer,  needing  no  dogs.  They  even  now 
prefer  wild  meat — even  "  'possum  "  and  "  'coon" 
and  ground-hog — to  any  other.  In  Bell  County 
I  spent  the  day  in  the  house  of  a  woman  eighty 
years  old,  who  was  a  lingering  representative 
of  a  nearly  extinct  type.  She  had  never  been 
out  of  the  neighborhood  of  her  birth,  knew  the 
mountains  like  a  garden,  had  whipped  men  in 
single-handed  encounter,  brought  down  many 
a  deer  and  wild  turkey  with  her  own  rifle,  and 
now,  infirm,  had  but  to  sit  in  her  cabin  door 
and  send  her  trained  dogs  into  the  depths  of 
the  forests  to  discover  the  wished -for  game. 
A  fiercer  woman  I  never  looked  on. 
240 


Ill 


OUR  course  now  lay  direct  towards  Cum- 
berland Gap,  some  twenty  miles  south- 
ward. Our  road  ran  along  the  bank  of 
the  Cumberland  River  to  the  ford,  the  imme- 
morial crossing-place  of  early  travel — and  a 
beautiful  spot — thence  to  Pineville,  situated  in 
that  narrow  opening  in  Pine  Mountain  where 
the  river  cuts  it,  and  thence  through  the  valley 
of  Yellow  Creek  to  the  wonderful  pass.  The 
scenery  in  this  region  is  one  succession  of  dense- 
ly wooded  mountains,  blue-tinted  air,  small  cul- 
tivated tracts  in  the  fertile  valleys,  and  lovely 
watercourses. 

Along  the  first  part  of  our  route  the  river 
slips  crystal-clear  over  its  rocky  bed,  and  be- 
neath the  lone  green  pendent  branches  of  the 
trees  that  crowd  the  banks.  At  the  famous 
ford  it  was  only  two  or  three  feet  deep  at  the 
time  of  our  crossing.  This  is  a  historic  point. 
Here  was  one  of  the  oldest  settlements  in  the 
country ;  here  the  Federal  army  destroyed  the 
Q  241 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

houses  and  fences  during  the  Civil  War ;  and 
here  ZoUikoff  er  came  to  protect  the  Kentucky- 
gate  that  opens  into  East  Tennessee.  At  Pine- 
ville,  just  beyond,  we  did  not  remain  long.  For 
some  reason  not  clearly  understood  by  travel- 
lers, a  dead-line  has  been  drawn  through  the 
midst  of  the  town,  and  not  knowing  on  which 
side  we  were  entitled  to  stand,  we  hastened 
on  to  a  place  where  we  might  occupy  neutral 
ground. 

The  situation  is  strikingly  picturesque :  the 
mountain  looks  as  if  cleft  sheer  and  fallen  apart, 
the  peaks  on  each  side  rising  almost  perpendicu- 
larly, with  massive  overhanging  crests  wooded 
to  the  summits,  but  showing  gray  rifts  of  the 
inexhaustible  limestone.  The  river  when  low- 
est is  here  at  an  elevation  of  nine  hundred  and 
sixty  feet,  and  the  peaks  leap  to  the  height  of 
twenty-two  hundred.  Here  in  the  future  will 
most  probably  pass  a  railroad,  and  be  a  popu- 
lous town,  for  here  is  the  only  opening  through 
Pine  Mountain  from  "  the  brakes  "  of  Sandy  to 
the  Tennessee  line,  and  tributary  to  the  water- 
courses that  centre  here  are  some  five  hundred 
thousand  acres  of  timber  land. 

The  ride  from  Pineville  to  the  Gap,  fourteen 

miles   southward,  is   most   beautiful.     Yellow 

Creek  becomes  in  local  pronunciation  "  Yaller 

Crick."     One  cannot  be  long  in  eastern  Ken- 

242 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

tucky  without  being  struck  by  the  number  and 
character  of  the  names  given  to  the  water- 
courses, which  were  the  natural  avenues  of 
migratory  travel.  Few  of  the  mountains  have 
names.  What  a  history  is  shut  up  in  these 
names!  Cutshin  Creek,  where  some  pioneer, 
they  say,  damaged  those  useful  members ;  but 
more  probably  where  grows  a  low  greenbrier 
which  cuts  the  shins  and  riddles  the  pantaloons. 
These  pioneers  had  humor.  They  named  one 
creek  "  Troublesome,"  for  reasons  apparent  to 
him  who  goes  there ;  another, "  No  Worse  Creek," 
on  equally  good  grounds  ;  another,  "  Defeated 
Creek";  and  a  great  many,  "Lost  Creek."  In 
one  part  of  the  country  it  is  possible  for  one  to 
enter  "Hell  fur  Sartain,"  and  get  out  at  "King- 
dom Come."  Near  by  are  "Upper  Devil"  and 
"Lower  Devil."  One  day  we  went  to  a  moun- 
tain meeting  which  was  held  in  "  a  school-house 
and  church-house  "  on  "  Stinking  Creek."  One 
might  suppose  they  would  have  worshipped  in 
a  more  fragrant  locality  ;  but  the  stream  is  very 
beautiful,  and  not  malodgrous.  It  received  its 
name  from  its  former  canebrakes  and  deer  licks, 
which  made  game  abundant.  Great  numbers 
were  killed  for  choice  bits  of  venison  and  hides. 
Then  there  are  "  Ten-mile  Creek  "  and  "  Six- 
teen-mile Creek,"  meaning  to  clinch  the  dis- 
tance by  name;  and  what  is  philologically  in- 
243 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

teresting,  one  finds  numerous  ''''Trace  Forks," 
originally  "7>^/7  Forks." 

Bell  County  and  the  Yellow  Creek  Valley 
serve  to  illustrate  the  incalculable  mineral  and 
timber  resources  of  eastern  Kentucky.  Our 
road  at  times  cut  through  forests  of  magnifi- 
cent timbers — oak  (black  and  white),  walnut 
(black  and  white),  poplar,  maple,  and  chestnut, 
beech,  lynn.  gum,  dogwood,  and  elm.  Here  are 
some  of  the  finest  coal-fields  in  the  world,  the 
one  on  Clear  Creek  being  fourteen  feet  thick. 
Here  are  pure  cannel-coals  and  coking-coals. 
At  no  other  point  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  are 
iron  ores  suitable  for  steel-making  purposes  so 
close  to  fuel  so  cheap.  With  an  eastern  coal- 
field of  10,000  square  miles,  with  an  area  equally 
large  covered  with  a  virgin  growth  of  the  finest 
economic  timbers,  with  watercourses  feasible 
and  convenient,  it  cannot  be  long  before  eastern 
Kentucky  will  be  opened  up  to  great  industries. 
Enterprise  has  already  turned  hither,  and  the 
distinctiveness  of  the  mountaineer  race  already 
begins  to  disappear.  The  two  futures  before 
them  are,  to  be  swept  out  of  these  mountains 
by  the  in-rushing  spirit  of  contending  indus- 
tries, or  to  be  aroused,  civilized,  and  devel- 
oped. 

Long  before  you  come  in  sight  of  the  great 
Gap,  the  idea  of  it  dominates  the  mind.  While 
244 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

yet  some  miles  away,  it  looms  up,  1675  ^^^^  in 
elevation,  some  half  a  mile  across  from  crest  to 
crest,  the  pinnacle  on  the  left  towering  to  the 
height  of  2500  feet. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  when  our  tired 
horses  began  the  long,  winding,  rocky  climb 
from  the  valley  to  the  brow  of  the  pass.  As  we 
stood  in  the  passway,  amid  the  deepening  shad- 
ows of  the  twilight  and  the  solemn  repose  of 
the  mighty  landscape,  the  Gap  seemed  to  be 
crowded  with  two  invisible  and  countless  page- 
ants of  human  life,  the  one  passing  in,  the  other 
passing  out ;  and  the  air  grew  thick  with  un- 
heard utterances — primeval  sounds,  undistin- 
guishable  and  strange,  of  creatures  nameless 
and  never  seen  by  man ;  the  wild  rush  and 
whoop  of  retreating  and  pursuing  tribes ;  the 
slow  steps  of  watchful  pioneers ;  the  wail  of 
dying  children  and  the  songs  of  homeless  wom- 
en ;  the  muffled  tread  of  routed  and  broken 
armies — all  the  sounds  of  surprise  and  delight, 
victory  and  defeat,  hunger  and  pain,  and  weari- 
ness and  despair,  that  the  human  heart  can 
utter.  Here  passed  the  first  of  the  white  race 
who  led  the  way  into  the  valley  of  the  Cum- 
berland ;  here  passed  that  small  band  of  fear- 
less men  who  gave  the  Gap  its  name;  here 
passed  the  "Long  Hunters";  here  rushed  the 
armies  of  the  Civil  War ;  here  has  passed  the 
245 


Through  Cumberland  Gap  on  Horseback 

wave  of  westerly  emigration,  whose  force  has 
spent  itself  only  on  the  Pacific  slopes;  and 
here  in  the  long  future  must  flow  backward 
and  forward  the  wealth  of  the  North  and  the 
South. 


MOUNTAIN     PASSES     OF    THE 
CUMBERLAND 


I 


THE  writer  has  been  publishing  during  the 
last  few  years  a  series  of  articles  on 
Kentucky.  With  this  article  the  series 
will  be  brought  to  a  close.  Hitherto  he  has 
written  of  nature  in  the  Blue-grass  Region  and 
of  certain  aspects  of  life ;  but  as  he  comes  to 
take  leave  of  his  theme,  he  finds  his  attention 
fixed  upon  that  great  mountain  wall  which  lies 
along  the  southeastern  edge  of  the  State.  At 
various  points  of  this  wall  are  now  beginning 
to  be  enacted  new  scenes  in  the  history  of  Ken- 
tucky; and  what  during  a  hundred  years  has 
been  an  inaccessible  background,  is  becoming 
the  fore-front  of  a  civilization  which  will  not 
only  change  the  life  of  the  State  within,  but  ad- 
vance it  to  a  commanding  position  in  national 
economic  affairs. 

But  it  should  not  be  lost  sight  of  that  in  writ- 
ing this  article,  as  in  writing  all  the  others,  it 
is  with  the  human  problem  in  Kentucky  that 
he  is  solely  concerned.    He  will  seem  to  be  deal- 
249 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

ing  with  commercial  activities  for  their  own 
sake.  He  will  write  of  coals  and  ores  and  tim- 
bers, of  ovens  and  tunnels  and  mines ;  but  if  the 
reader  will  bear  with  him  to  the  end,  he  will 
learn  that  these  are  dealt  with  only  for  the  sake 
of  looking  beyond  them  at  the  results  which 
they  bring  on  :  town-making  in  various  stages, 
the  massing  and  distributing  of  wealth,  the 
movements  of  population,  the  dislodgment  of 
isolated  customs — on  the  whole,  results  that  lie 
in  the  domain  of  the  human  problem  in  its 
deepest  phases. 

Consider  for  a  moment,  then,  what  this  great 
wall  is,  and  what  influence  it  has  had  over  the 
history  of  Kentucky  and  upon  the  institutions 
and  characteristics  of  its  people. 

You  may  begin  at  the  western  frontier  of 
Kentucky  on  the  Mississippi  River,  about  five 
hundred  miles  away,  and  travel  steadily  east- 
ward across  the  billowy  plateau  of  the  State, 
going  up  and  up  all  the  time  until  you  come  to 
its  base,  and  above  its  base  it  rises  to  the  height 
of  some  three  thousand  feet.  For  miles  before 
you  reach  it  you  discover  that  it  is  defended  by 
a  zone  of  almost  inaccessible  hills  with  steep 
slopes,  forests  difficult  to  penetrate,  and  narrow 
jagged  gorges ;  and  further  defended  by  a  sin- 
gle sharp  wall-like  ridge,  having  an  elevation  of 
about  twenty-two  hundred  feet,  and  lying  near- 
250 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

ly  parallel  with  it,  at  a  distance  of  about  twenty 
miles.  Or,  if  you  should  attempt  to  reach  this 
wall  from  the  south,  you  would  discover  that 
from  that  side  also  it  is  hardly  less  hostile  to 
approach.  Hence  it  has  stood  in  its  virgin  wil- 
derness, a  vast  isolating  and  isolated  barrier, 
fierce,  beautiful,  storm-racked,  serene ;  in  win- 
ter, brown  and  gray,  with  its  naked  woods  and 
rifts  of  stone,  or  mantled  in  white;  in  summer, 
green,  or  of  all  greens  from  darkest  to  palest, 
and  touched  with  all  shades  of  bloom ;  in  au- 
tumn, colored  like  the  sunset  clouds ;  curtained 
all  the  year  by  exquisite  health-giving  atmos- 
pheres, lifting  itself  all  the  year  towards  lovely, 
changing  skies. 

Understand  the  position  of  this  natural  for- 
tress-line with  regard  to  the  area  of  Kentucky. 
That  area  has  somewhat  the  shape  of  an  enor- 
mous flat  foot,  with  a  disjointed  big  toe,  a 
roughly  hacked-off  ankle,  and  a  missing  heel. 
The  sole  of  this  huge  foot  rests  solidly  on  Ten- 
nessee, the  Ohio  River  trickles  across  the 
ankle  and  over  the  top,  the  big  toe  is  washed 
entirely  off  by  the  Tennessee  River,  and  the 
long-missing  heel  is  to  be  found  in  Virginia, 
never  having  been  ceded  by  that  State.  Be- 
tween the  Kentucky  foot  and  the  Virginia 
heel  is  piled  up  this  immense,  bony,  grisly 
mass  of  the  Cumberland  Mountain,  extending 
251 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

some  three  hundred  miles  northeast  and  south 
west. 

It  was  through  this  heel  that  Kentucky  had 
to  be  peopled.  The  thin,  half-starved,  weary- 
line  of  pioneer  civilizers  had  to  penetrate  it, 
and  climb  this  obstructing  mountain  wall,  as  a 
line  of  travelling  ants  might  climb  the  wall  of 
a  castle.  In  this  case  only  the  strongest  of  the 
ants — the  strongest  in  body,  the  strongest  in 
will — succeeded  in  getting  over  and  establish- 
ing their  colony  in  the  country  far  beyond. 
Luckily  there  was  an  enormous  depression  in 
the  wall,  or  they  might  never  have  scaled  it. 
During  about  half  a  century  this  depression 
was  the  difficult,  exhausting  entrance -point 
through  which  the  State  received  the  largest 
part  of  its  people,  the  furniture  of  their  homes, 
and  the  implements  of  their  civilization;  so 
that  from  the  very  outset  that  people  repre- 
sented the  most  striking  instance  of  a  survi- 
val of  the  fittest  that  may  be  observed  in  the 
founding  of  any  American  commonwealth. 
The  feeblest  of  the  ants  could  not  climb  the 
wall ;  the  idlest  of  them  would  not.  Observe, 
too,  that,  once  on  the  other  side,  it  was  as  hard 
to  get  back  as  it  had  been  to  get  over.  That 
is,  the  Cumberland  Mountain  kept  the  little 
ultramontane  society  isolated.  Being  isolated, 
it  was  kept  pure  -  blooded.  Being  isolated,  it 
252 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

developed  the  spirit  and  virtues  engendered 
by  isolation.  Hence  those  traits  for  which 
Kentuckians  were  once,  and  still  think  them- 
selves, distinguished — passion  for  self-govern- 
ment, passion  for  personal  independence,  brav- 
ery, fortitude,  hospitality.  On  account  of  this 
mountain  barrier  the  entire  civilization  of  the 
State  has  had  a  one-sided  development.  It  has 
become  known  for  pasturage  and  agriculture, 
whiskey,  hemp,  tobacco,  and  fine  stock.  On 
account  of  it  the  great  streams  of  colonization 
flowing  from  the  North  towards  the  South, 
and  flowing  from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  tow- 
ards the  West,  have  divided  and  passed  around 
Kentucky  as  waters  divide  and  pass  around  an 
island,  uniting  again  on  the  farther  side.  It 
has  done  the  like  for  the  highways  of  com- 
merce, so  that  the  North  has  become  woven 
to  the  South  and  the  East  woven  to  the  West 
by  a  connecting  tissue  of  railroads,  dropping 
Kentucky  out  as  though  it  had  no  vital  con- 
nection, as  though  it  were  not  a  controlling 
point  of  connection,  for  the  four  sections  of  the 
country.  Thus  keeping  out  railroads,  it  has 
kept  out  manufactures,  kept  out  commerce, 
kept  out  industrial  cities.  For  three-quarters 
of  a  century  generations  of  young  Kentuck- 
ians have  had  to  seek  pursuits  of  this  charac- 
ter in  other  quarters,  thus  establishing  a  con- 
253 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

stant  draining  away  from  the  State  of  its 
resolute,  vigorous  manhood.  Restricting  the 
Kentuckians  who  have  remained  to  an  agri- 
cultural type  of  life,  it  has  brought  upon  them 
a  reputation  for  lack  of  enterprise.  More  than 
all  this  has  that  great  barrier  wall  done  for 
the  history  of  Kentucky.  For,  within  a  hun- 
dred years,  the  only  thing  to  take  possession 
of  it,  slowly,  sluggishly  overspreading  the  re- 
gion of  its  foot-hills,  its  vales  and  fertile  slopes 
'—the  only  thing  to  take  possession  of  it  and 
to  claim  it  has  been  a  race  of  mountaineers, 
an  idle,  shiftless,  ignorant,  lawless  population, 
whose  increasing  numbers,  pauperism,  and 
lawlessness,  whose  family  feuds  and  clan-like 
vendettas,  have  for  years  been  steadily  gain- 
ing for  Kentucky  the  reputation  for  having 
one  of  the  worst  backwoods  populations  on  the 
continent,  or,  for  that  matter,  in  the  world. 

But  for  the  presence  of  this  wall  the  history 
of  the  State — indeed  the  history  of  the  United 
States — would  have  been  profoundly  different. 
Long  ago,  in  virtue  of  its  position,  Kentucky 
would  have  knit  together,  instead  of  holding 
apart,  the  North  and  the  South.  The  cam- 
paigns and  the  results  of  the  Civil  War  would 
have  been  changed ;  the  Civil  War  might  never 
have  taken  place.  But  standing  as  it  has  stood, 
it  has  left  Kentucky,  near  the  close  of  the  first 
254 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

century  of  its  existence  as  a  State,  with  a  repu- 
tation somewhat  like  the  shape  of  its  territory 
— unsymmetric,  mutilated,  and  with  certain 
parts  missing. 

But  now  consider  this  wall  of  the  Cumber- 
land Mountain  from  another  point  of  view.  If 
you  should  stand  on  the  crest  at  any  point 
where  it  forms  the  boundary  of  Kentucky ;  or 
south  of  it,  where  it  extends  into  Tennessee ; 
or  north  of  it,  where  it  extends  into  Virginia — 
if  you  should  stand  thus  and  look  northward, 
you  would  look  out  upon  a  vast  area  of  coal. 
For  many  years  now  it  has  been  known  that 
the  coal  -  measure  rocks  of  eastern  Kentucky 
comprise  about  a  fourth  of  the  area  of  the 
State,  and  are  not  exceeded  in  value  by  those 
of  any  other  State.  It  has  been  known  that 
this  buried  solar  force  exceeds  that  of  Great 
Britain.  Later  it  has  become  known  that  the 
Kentucky  portion  of  the  great  Appalachian 
coal-field  contains  the  largest  area  of  rich  can- 
nel  -  coals  yet  discovered^  these  having  been 
traced  in  sixteen  counties,  and  some  of  them 
excelling  by  test  the  famous  cannel  -  coal  of 
Great  Britain ;  later  it  has  become  known 
that  here  is  to  be  found  the  largest  area  of 
coking -coal  yet  discovered,  the  main  coal — 
discovered  a  few  years  ago,  and  named  the 
"  Elkhorn  " — having  been  traced  over  sixteen 
.  255 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

hundred  square  miles,  and  equalling  American 
standard  coke  in  excellence. 

Further,  looking  northward,  you  look  out 
upon  a  region  of  iron  ores,  the  deposits  in 
Kentucky  ranking  sixth  in  variety  and  extent 
among  those  to  be  found  in  all  other  States, 
and  being  better  disposed  for  working  than  any 
except  those  of  Virginia,  Tennessee,  and  Ala- 
bama. For  a  hundred  years  now,  it  should 
be  remembered  in  this  connection,  iron  has 
been  smelted  in  Kentucky,  and  been  an  impor- 
tant article  of  commerce.  As  early  as  1823  it 
was  made  at  Cumberland  Gap,  and  shipped  by 
river  to  markets  as  remote  as  New  Orleans  and 
St.  Louis.  At  an  early  date,  also,  it  was  made 
in  a  small  charcoal  forge  at  Big  Creek  Gap, 
and  was  hauled  in  wagons  into  central  Ken- 
tucky, where  it  found  a  ready  market  for  such 
purposes  as  plough-shares  and  wagon  tires. 

Further,  looking  northward,  you  have  ex- 
tending far  and  wide  before  you  the  finest  pri- 
meval region  of  hard-woods  in  America. 

Suppose,  now,  that  you  turn  and  look  from 
this  same  crest  of  the  Cumberland  Mountain 
southward,  or  towards  the  Atlantic  seaboard. 
In  that  direction  there  lie  some  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  square  miles  of  country 
which  is  practically  coalless  ;  but  practically 
coalless,  it  is  incalculably  rich  in  iron  ores 
256 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

for  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel.  You 
look  out  upon  the  new  industrial  empire  of 
the  United  States,  with  vast  and  ever  -  grow- 
ing needs  of  manufactures,  fuel,  and  railroads. 
That  is,  for  a  hundred  miles  you  stand  on  the 
dividing  line  of  two  distinct  geological  forma- 
tions :  to  the  north,  the  Appalachian  coal-fields; 
to  the  south,  mountains  of  iron  ores ;  rearing 
itself  between  these,  this  immense  barrier  walb 
which  creates  an  unapproachable  wilderness 
not  only  in  southeastern  Kentucky,  but  in  East 
Tennessee,  western  Virginia,  and  western 
North  Carolina — the  largest  extent  of  country 
in  the  United  States  remaining  undeveloped. 

But  the  time  had  to  come  when  this  wilder- 
ness would  be  approached  on  all  sides,  attacked, 
penetrated  to  the  heart.  Such  wealth  of  re- 
sources could  not  be  let  alone  or  remain  unused. 
As  respects  the  development  of  the  region,  the 
industrial  problem  may  be  said  to  have  taken 
two  forms — the  one,  the  development  of  the 
coal  and  iron  on  opposite  sides  of  the  mountains, 
the  manufacture  of  coke  and  iron  and  steel,  the 
establishment  of  wood-working  industries,  and 
the  delivery  of  all  products  to  the  markets  of 
the  land  ;  second,  the  bringing  together  of  the 
coals  on  the  north  side  and  the  ores  through- 
out the  south.  In  this  way,  then,  the  Cumber- 
land  Mountain   no  longer   offered   a  barrier 

R  257 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

merely  to  the  civilization  of  Kentucky,  but  to 
the  solution  of  the  greatest  economic  problem 
of  the  age — the  cheapest  manufacture  of  iron 
and  steel.  But  before  the  pressure  of  this  need 
the  mountain  had  to  give  way  and  surrender 
its  treasures.  At  any  cost  of  money  and  labor, 
the  time  had  to  come  when  it  would  pay  to 
bring  these  coals  and  ores  together.  But  how 
was  this  to  be  done  ?  The  answer  was  simple  : 
it  must  be  done  by  means  of  natural  water 
gaps  and  by  tunnels  through  the  mountain. 
It  is  the  object  of  this  paper  to  call  attention 
to  the  way  in  which  the  new  civilization  of  the 
South  is  expected  to  work  at  four  mountain 
passes,  and  to  point  out  some  of  the  results 
which  are  to  follow. 


II 


ON  the  Kentucky  side  of  the  mighty  wall 
of  the  Cumberland  Mountain,  and 
nearly  parallel  with  it,  is  the  sharp 
single  wall  of  Pine  Mountain,  the  westernmost 
ridge  of  the  Alleghany  system.  For  about  a 
hundred  miles  these  two  gnarled  and  ancient 
monsters  lie  crouched  side  by  side,  guarding 
between  them  their  hidden  stronghold  of  treas- 
ure— an  immense  valley  of  timbers  and  irons 
and  coals.  Near  the  middle  point  of  this  in- 
ner wall  there  occurs  a  geological  fault.  The 
mountain  falls  apart  as  though  cut  in  twain 
by  some  heavy  downward  stroke,  showing  on 
the  faces  of  the  fissure  precipitous  sides  wooded 
to  the  crests.  There  is  thus  formed  the  cele- 
brated and  magnificent  pass  through  which  the 
Cumberland  River — one  of  the  most  beautiful 
in  the  land — slips  silently  out  of  its  mountain 
valley,  and  passes  on  to  the  hills  and  the  pla- 
teaus of  Kentucky,  In  the  gap  there  is  a  space 
for  the  bed  of  this  river,  and  on  each  side  of 
259 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

the  river  space  for  a  roadway  and  nothing 
more. 

Note  the  commanding  situation  of  this  in- 
ner pass.  Travel  east  along  Pine  Mountain  or 
travel  west,  and  you  find  no  other  water  gap 
within  a  hundred  miles.  Through  this  that 
thin,  toiling  line  of  pioneer  civilizers  made  its 
way,  having  scaled  the  great  outer  Cumberland 
wall  some  fifteen  miles  southward.  But  for  this 
single  geological  fault,  by  which  a  water  gap  of 
the  inner  mountain  was  placed  opposite  a  de- 
pression in  the  outer  mountain,  thus  creating 
a  continuous  passway  through  both,  the  colo- 
nization of  Kentucky,  difficult  enough  even  with 
this  advantage,  would  have  been  indefinitely 
delayed,  or  from  this  side  wholly  impossible. 
/Through  this  inner  portal  was  traced  in  time 
the  regular  path  of  the  pioneers,  afterwards 
known  as  the  Wilderness  Road.  On  account 
of  the  travel  over  this  road  and  the  controlling 
nature  of  the  site,  there  was  long  ago  formed 
on  the  spot  a  little  backwoods  settlement,  call- 
ing itself  Pineville.  It  consisted  of  a  single 
straggling  line  of  cabins  and  shanties  of  logs 
on  each  side  of  a  roadway,  this  road  being  the 
path  of  the  pioneers.  In  the  course  of  time  it 
was  made  the  county-seat.  Being  the  county- 
seat,  the  way-side  village,  catching  every  trav- 
eller on  foot  or  on  horse  or  in  wagons,  began 
260 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

some  years  ago  to  make  itself  still  better  known 
as  the  scene  of  mountain  feuds.  The  name  of 
the  town  when  uttered  anywhere  in  Kentucky 
suggested  but  one  thing — a  blot  on  the  civil- 
ization of  the  State,  a  mountain  fastness  where 
the  human  problem  seems  most  intractable. 
A  few  such  places  have  done  more  to  foster  the 
unfortunate  impression  which  Kentucky  has 
made  upon  the  outside  world  than  all  the  towns 
of  the  blue-grass  country  put  together. 

Five  summers  ago,  in  1885,  in  order  to  pre- 
pare an  article  for  Harper's  Magazine  on  the 
mountain  folk  of  the  Cumberland  region,  I 
made  my  way  towards  this  mountain  town, 
now  riding  on  a  buck-board,  now  on  a  horse 
whose  back  was  like  a  board  that  was  too  stiff 
to  buck.  The  road  I  travelled  was  that  great 
highway  between  Kentucky  and  the  South, 
which  at  various  times  within  a  hundred  years 
has  been  known  as  the  Wilderness  Road,  or 
the  Cumberland  Road,  or  the  National  Turn- 
pike, or  the  "  Kaintuck  Hog  Road,"  as  it  was 
called  by  the  mountaineers.  It  is  impossible 
to  come  upon  this  road  without  pausing,  or  to 
write  of  it  without  a  tribute.  It  led  from  Balti- 
more over  the  mountains  of  Virginia  through 
the  great  wilderness  by  Cumberland  Gap.  All 
roads  below  Philadelphia  converged  at  this 
gap,  just  as  the  buffalo  and  Indian  trails  had 
261 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

earlier  converged,  and  just  as  many  railroads 
are  converging  now.  The  improvement  of 
this  road  became  in  time  the  pet  scheme  of 
the  State  governments  of  Virginia  and  Ken- 
tucky. Before  the  war  millions  of  head  of 
stock — horses,  hogs,  cattle,  mules — were  driven 
over  it  to  the  southern  markets ;  and  thou- 
sands of  vehicles,  with  families  and  servants 
and  trunks,  have  somehow  passed  over  it,  com- 
ing northward  into  Kentucky,  or  going  south- 
ward on  pleasure  excursions.  During  the  war 
vast  commissary  stores  passed  back  and  forth, 
following  the  movement  of  armies.  But  de- 
spite all  this — despite  all  that  has  been  done  to 
civilize  it  since  Boone  traced  its  course  in  1790, 
this  honored  historic  thoroughfare  remains  to- 
day as  it  was  in  the  beginning,  with  all  its 
sloughs  and  sands,  its  mud  and  holes,  and  jut- 
ting ledges  of  rock  and  loose  bowlders,  and 
twists  and  turns,  and  general  total  depravity. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  when  the  original 
Kentuckians  were  settled  on  the  blue  -  grass 
plateau  they  sternly  set  about  the  making  of 
good  roads,  and  to  this  day  remain  the  best 
road-builders  in  America.  One  such  road  was 
enough.  They  are  said  to  have  been  notorious 
for  profanity,  those  who  came  into  Kentucky 
from  this  side.  Naturally.  Many  were  infidels 
— there  are  roads  that  make  a  man  lose  faith. 
262 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

It  is  known  that  the  more  pious  companies  of 
them,  as  they  travelled  along,  would  now  and 
then  give  up  in  despair,  sit  down,  raise  a  hymn, 
and  have  prayers  before  they  could  go  farther. 
Perhaps  one  of  the  provocations  to  homicide 
among  the  mountain  people  should  be  reck- 
oned this  road.  I  have  seen  two  of  the  mild- 
est of  men,  after  riding  over  it  for  a  few  hours, 
lose  their  temper  and  begin  to  fight — fight  their 
horses,  fight  the  flies,  fight  the  cobwebs  on 
their  noses,  fight  anything. 

Over  this  road,  then,  and  towards  this  town, 
one  day,  five  summers  ago,  I  was  picking  my 
course,  but  not  without  pale  human  apprehen- 
sions. At  that  time  one  did  not  visit  Pineville 
for  nothing.  When  I  reached  it  I  found  it 
tense  with  repressed  excitement.  Only  a  few 
days  previous  there  had  been  a  murderous  af- 
fray in  the  streets  ;  the  inhabitants  had  taken 
sides  ;  a  dead-line  had  been  drawn  through  the 
town,  so  that  those  living  on  either  side  crossed 
to  the  other  at  the  risk  of  their  lives ;  and  there 
was  blue  murder  in  the  air.  I  was  a  stranger; 
I  was  innocent ;  I  was  peaceful.  But  I  was 
told  that  to  be  a  stranger  and  innocent  and 
peaceful  did  no  good.  Stopping  to  eat,  I  fain 
would  have  avoided,  only  it  seemed  best  not  to 
be  murdered  for  refusing.  All  that  I  now  re- 
member of  the  dinner  was  a  corn-bread  that 
263 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

would  have  made  a  fine  building  stone,  being 
of  an  attractive  bluish  tint,  hardening  rapidly 
upon  exposure  to  the  atmosphere,  and  being 
susceptible  of  a  high  polish.  A  block  of  this, 
freshly  quarried,  I  took,  and  then  was  up  and 
away.  But  not  quickly,  for  having  exchanged 
my  horse  for  another,  I  found  that  the  latter 
moved  off  as  though  at  every  step  expecting 
to  cross  the  dead-line,  and  so  perish.  The  im- 
pression of  the  place  was  one  never  to  be  for- 
gotten, with  its  squalid  hovels,  its  ragged  armed 
men  collected  suspiciously  in  little  groups,  with 
angry,  distrustful  faces,  or  peering  out  from 
behind  the  ambush  of  a  window. 

A  few  weeks  ago  I  went  again  to  Pineville, 
this  time  by  means  of  one  of  the  most  extensive 
and  powerful  railroad  systems  of  the  South. 
At  the  station  a  'bus  was  waiting  to  take  pas- 
sengers to  the  hotel.  The  station  was  on  one 
side  of  the  river,  the  hotel  on  the  other.  We 
were  driven  across  a  new  iron  bridge,  this  be- 
ing but  one  of  four  now  spanning  the  river 
formerly  crossed  at  a  single  ford.  At  the  hotel 
we  were  received  by  a  porter  of  metropolitan 
urbanity  and  self-esteem.  Entering  the  hotel, 
I  found  it  lighted  by  gas,  and  full  of  guests 
from  different  parts  of  the  United  States.  In 
the  lobby  there  was  a  suppressed  murmur  of 
refined  voices  coming  from  groups  engaged  in 
264 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

serious  talk.  As  by-and-by  I  sat  in  a  spacious 
dining-room,  looking  over  a  freshly  printed 
bill  of  fare,  some  one  in  the  parlors  opposite 
was  playing  on  the  piano  airs  from  "Tann- 
hauser"  and  "  Billee  Taylor."  The  dining- 
room  was  animated  by  a  throng  of  brisk,  tidy, 
white  young  waiting-girls,  some  of  whom  were 
far  too  pretty  to  look  at  except  from  behind  a 
thick  napkin  ;  and  presently,  to  close  this  ex- 
perience of  the  new  Pineville,  there  came  along 
such  inconceivable  flannel-cakes  and  molasses 
that,  forgetting  industrial  and  social  problems, 
I  gave  myself  up  to  the  enjoyment  of  a  prob- 
lem personal  and  gastric  ;  and  ere  long,  having 
spread  myself  between  snowy  sheets,  I  melted 
away,  as  the  butter  between  the  cakes,  into 
warm  slumber,  having  first  poured  over  my- 
self a  syrup  of  thanksgiving. 

The  next  morning  I  looked  out  of  my  win- 
dow upon  a  long  pleasant  valley,  mountain- 
sheltered,  and  crossed  by  the  winding  Cumber- 
land; here  and  there  cottages  of  a  smart  modern 
air  already  built  or  building ;  in  another  direc- 
tion, business  blocks  of  brick  and  stone,  graded 
streets  and  avenues  and  macadamized  roads; 
and  elsewhere,  saw  and  planing  mills,  coke 
ovens,  and  other  evidences  of  commercial  de- 
velopment. Through  the  open  door  of  a  church 
I  saw  a  Catholic  congregation  already  on  its 
265 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

knees,  and  the  worshippers  of  various  Prot- 
estant denominations  were  looking  towards 
their  own  temples.  The  old  Pineville,  happily- 
situated  farther  down  the  river,  at  the  very- 
opening  of  the  pass,  was  rapidly  going  to  ruins. 
The  passion  for  homicide  had  changed  into  a 
passion  for  land  speculation.  The  very  man 
on  whose  account  at  my  former  visit  the  old 
Pineville  had  been  divided  into  two  deadly 
factions,  whose  name  throughout  all  the  re- 
gion once  stood  for  mediaeval  violence,  had  be- 
come a  real-estate  agent.  I  was  introduced  to 
him. 

"  Sir,"  said  I,  "  I  don't  feel  so  very  much 
afraid  of  you." 

"  Sir,"  said  he,  "  I  don't  like  to  run  myself." 

Such,  briefly,  is  the  impression  made  by  the 
new  Pineville — a  new  people  there,  new  indus- 
tries, new  moral  atmosphere,  new  civilization. 

The  explanation  of  this  change  is  not  far  to 
seek.  By  virtue  of  its  commanding  position 
as  the  only  inner  gateway  to  the  North,  this 
pass  was  the  central  point  of  distribution  for 
southeastern  Kentucky.  Flowing  into  the 
Cumberland,  on  the  north  side  of  the  moun- 
tain, is  Clear  Creek,  and  on  the  south  side  is 
Strait  Creek,  the  two  principal  streams  of  this 
region,  and  supplying  water-power  and  drain- 
age. Tributary  to  these  streams  are,  say,  half 
266 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

a  million  acres  of  noble  timber  land ;  in  the 
mountains  around,  the  best  coals,  coking  and 
domestic ;  elsewhere,  iron  ores,  pure  brown, 
hematite,  and  carbonates  ;  inexhaustible  quan- 
tities of  limestone,  blue-gray  sandstone,  brick 
clays  ;  gushing  from  the  mountains,  abundant 
streams  of  healthful  freestone  water;  on  the 
northern  hill-sides,  a  deep  loam  suitable  for 
grass  and  gardens  and  fruits.  Add  to  this 
that  through  this  water-gap,  following  the  path 
of  the  Wilderness  Road,  as  the  Wilderness  Road 
had  followed  the  path  of  the  Indian  and  the 
buffalo — through  this  water -gap  would  have 
to  pass  all  railroads  that  should  connect  the 
North  and  South  by  means  of  that  historic 
and  ancient  highway  of  traffic  and  travel. 

On  the  basis  of  these  facts,  three  summers 
ago  a  few  lawyers  in  Louisville  bought  300 
acres  of  land  near  the  riotous  old  town  of  Pine- 
ville,  and  in  the  same  summer  was  organized 
the  Pine  Mountain  Iron  and  Coal  Company, 
which  now,  however,  owns  about  twenty  thou- 
sand acres,  with  a  capital  stock  of  $2,000,000. 
It  should  be  noted  that  Southern  men  and 
native  capital  began  this  enterprise,  and  that 
although  other  stockholders  are  from  Chicago 
and  New  England,  most  of  the  capital  remains 
in  the  State.  Development  has  been  rapidly 
carried  forward,  and  over  five  hundred  thou- 
267 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

sand  dollars'  worth  of  lots  have  been  sold  the 
present  year.  It  is  pleasant  to  dwell  upon  the 
future  that  is  promised  for  this  place ;  pleasant 
to  hear  that  over  six  hundred  acres  in  this 
pleasant  valley  are  to  be  platted ;  that  there 
are  to  be  iron  -  furnaces  and  electric  lights, 
concrete  sidewalks  and  a  street  railway,  more 
bridges,  brick  -  yards,  and  a  high  -  school ;  and 
that  the  seventy-five  coke  ovens  now  in  blast 
are  to  be  increased  to  a  thousand.  Let  it  be 
put  down  to  the  credit  of  this  vigorous  little 
mountain  town  that  it  is  the  first  place  in 
that  region  to  put  Kentucky  coke  upon  the 
market,  and  create  a  wide  demand  for  it  in 
remote  quarters — Cincinnati  alone  offering  to 
take  the  daily  output  of  five  hundred  ovens. 

Thus  the  industrial  and  human  problems 
are  beginning  to  solve  themselves  side  by  side 
in  the  backwoods  of  Kentucky.  You  begin 
with  coke  and  end  with  Christianity.  It  is  the 
boast  of  Pineville  that  as  soon  as  it  begins  to 
make  its  own  iron  it  can  build  its  houses  with- 
out calling  on  the  outside  world  for  an  ounce 
of  material. 


M 


III 


IDDLESBOROUGH!  For  a  good 
many  years  in  England  and  through- 
out the  world  the  name  has  stood  as- 
sociated with  wealth  and  commercial  greatness 
— the  idea  of  a  powerful  city  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Tees,  in  the  North  Riding  of  Yorkshire, 
which  has  become  the  principal  seat  of  the 
English  iron  trade.  It  is,  therefore,  curious  to 
remember  that  near  the  beginning  of  the  cen- 
tury there  stood  on  the  site  of  this  powerful 
city  four  farm-houses  and  a  ruined  shrine  of 
St.  Hilda ;  that  it  took  thirty  years  to  bring 
the  population  up  to  the  number  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty-four  souls;  that  the  discovery 
of  iron-stone,  as  it  seems  to  be  called  on  that 
side,  gave  it  a  boom,  as  it  is  called  on  this ;  so 
that  ten  years  ago  it  had  some  sixty  thousand 
people,  its  hundred  and  thirty  blast-furnaces, 
besides  other  industries,  and  an  annual  output 
in  pig-iron  of  nearly  two  million  tons. 
But  there  is  now  an  English  Middlesborough 
269 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

in  America,  which  is  already  giving  to  the 
name  another  significance  in  the  stock  market 
of  London  and  among  the  financial  journals 
of  the  realm ;  and  if  the  idea  of  its  founders 
is  ever  realized,  if  its  present  rate  of  develop- 
ment goes  on,  it  will  in  time  represent  as  much 
wealth  in  gold  and  iron  as  the  older  city. 

In  the  mere  idea  of  the  American  or  Ken- 
tucky Middlesborough — for  while  it  seems  to 
be  meant  for  America,  it  is  to  be  found  in 
Kentucky — there  is  something  to  arrest  atten- 
tion on  the  score  of  originality.  That  the  at- 
tention of  wealthy  commoners,  bankers,  scien- 
tists, and  iron-masters  of  Great  Britain — some 
of  them  men  long  engaged  in  copper,  tin,  and 
gold  mines  in  the  remotest  quarters  of  the 
globe — that  the  attention  of  such  men  should 
be  focused  on  a  certain  spot  in  the  backwoods 
of  Kentucky ;  that  they  should  repeatedly  send 
over  experts  to  report  on  the  combination  of 
mineral  and  timber  wealth  ;  that  on  the  basis 
of  such  reports  they  should  form  themselves 
into  a  company  called  "  The  American  Associ- 
ation, Limited,"  and  purchase  60,000  acres  of 
land  lying  on  each  side  of  the  Cumberland 
Mountain  and  around  the  meeting-point  of 
the  States  of  Virginia,  Tennessee,  and  Ken- 
tucky ;  that  an  allied  association,  called  "  The 
Middlesborough  Town  Company,"  should  place 
270 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

here  the  site  of  a  city,  with  the  idea  of  making 
it  the  principal  seat  of  the  iron  and  steel  manu- 
facture of  the  United  States  ;  that  they  should 
go  to  work  to  create  this  city  outright  by  pour- 
ing in  capital  for  every  needed  purpose  ;  that 
they  should  remove  gigantic  obstacles  in  order 
to  connect  it  with  the  national  highways  of 
commerce  ;  that  they  should  thus  expend  some 
twenty  million  dollars,  and  let  it  be  known 
that  all  millions  further  wanted  were  forth- 
coming— in  the  idea  of  this  there  is  enough  to 
make  one  pause. 

As  one  cannot  ponder  the  idea  of  the  enter- 
prise without  being  impressed  with  its  large- 
ness, so  one  cannot  visit  the  place  without 
being  struck  by  the  energy  with  which  the 
plan  is  being  wrought  at.  "  It  is  not  sufficient 
to  know  that  this  property  possesses  coal  and 
iron  of  good  quality  and  in  considerable  quan- 
tities, and  that  the  deposits  are  situated  close 
together,  but  that  they  exist  in  such  circum- 
stances as  will  give  us  considerable  advantages 
over  any  competitors  that  either  now  exist  or 
whose  existence  can  in  any  way  be  foreseen  in 
the  near  future."  Such  were  the  instructions 
of  these  English  capitalists  to  their  agent  in 
America.  It  was  characteristic  of  their  race 
and  of  that  method  of  business  by  which  they 
have  become  the  masters  of  commerce  the 
271 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

world  over.  In  it  is  the  germ  of  their  idea — 
to  establish  a  city  for  the  manufacture  of  iron 
and  steel  which,  by  its  wealth  of  resources,  ad- 
vantages of  situation,  and  complete  develop- 
ment, should  place  competition  at  a  disadvan- 
tage, and  thus  make  it  impossible. 

It  yet  remains  to  be  seen  whether  this  can 
be  done.  Perhaps  even  the  hope  of  it  came 
from  an  inadequate  knowledge  of  how  vast  a 
region  they  had  entered,  and  how  incalculable 
its  wealth.  Perhaps  it  was  too  much  to  expect 
that  any  one  city,  however  situated,  however 
connected,  however  developed,  should  be  able 
to  absorb  or  even  to  control  the  development 
of  that  region  and  the  distribution  of  its  re- 
sources to  all  points  of  the  land.  It  suggests 
the  idea  of  a  single  woodpecker's  hoping  to 
carry  off  the  cherries  from  a  tree  which  a 
noble  company  of  cats  and  jays  and  other 
birds  were  watching;  or  of  a  family  of  squir- 
rels who  should  take  up  their  abode  in  a  cer- 
tain hole  with  the  idea  of  eating  all  the  wal- 
nuts in  a  forest.  But,  however  this  may  turn 
out,  these  Englishmen,  having  once  set  before 
themselves  their  aim,  have  never  swerved  from 
trying  to  attain  it ;  and  they  are  at  work  de- 
veloping their  city  with  the  hope  that  it  will 
bring  as  great  a  change  in  the  steel  market 
of  the  United  States  as  a  few  years  ago  was 
272 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

made  in  the  iron  market  by  the  manufacture 
of  Southern  iron. 

If  you  take  up  in  detail  the  working  out  of 
their  plan  of  development,  it  is  the  same — no 
stint,  no  drawing  back  or  swerving  aside,  no 
abatement  of  the  greatest  intentions.  They 
must  have  a  site  for  their  city — they  choose 
for  this  site  what  with  entire  truthfulness 
may  be  called  one  of  the  most  strategic  moun- 
tain passes  in  American  history.  They  must 
have  a  name — they  choose  that  of  the  principal 
seat  of  the  English  iron  trade.  They  must 
have  a  plant  for  the  manufacture  of  steel  by 
the  basic  process — they  promise  it  shall  be  the 
largest  in  the  United  States.  They  want  a 
tannery — it  shall  be  the  biggest  in  the  world. 
A  creek  has  to  be  straightened  to  improve 
drainage — they  spend  on  it  a  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars.  They  will  have  their  mineral  re- 
sources known — they  order  a  car  to  be  built, 
stock  it  with  an  exposition  of  their  minerals, 
place  it  in  charge  of  technical  experts,  and  set 
it  going  over  the  country.  They  take  a  notion 
to  establish  a  casino,  sanitarium,  and  hotel — it 
must  cost  over  seven  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
The  mountain  is  in  their  way  —  that  mighty 
wall  of  the  Cumberland  Mountain  which  has 
been  in  the  way  of  the  whole  United  States  for 
over  a  hundred  years — they  remove  this  moun- 
s  273 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

tain ;  that  is,  they  dig  through  it  a  great  union 
tunnel,  3750  feet  long,  beginning  in  Kentucky, 
running  under  a  corner  of  Virginia,  and  com- 
ing out  in  Tennessee.  Had  they  done  nothing 
but  this,  they  would  have  done  enough  to  en- 
title them  to  the  gratitude  of  the  nation,  for  it 
is  an  event  of  national  importance.  It  brings 
the  South  and  the  Atlantic  seaboard  in  con- 
nection with  the  Ohio  Valley  and  the  Lakes; 
it  does  more  to  make  the  North  and  the  South 
one  than  any  other  single  thing  that  has  hap- 
pened since  the  close  of  the  Civil  War. 

On  the  same  trip  that  took  me  to  Pineville 
five  summers  ago,  I  rode  from  that  place  south- 
ward towards  the  wall  of  Cumberland  Moun- 
tain. I  wished  to  climb  this  wall  at  that  vast 
depression  in  it  known  as  Cumberland  Gap.  It 
was  a  tranquil  afternoon  as  I  took  my  course 
over  the  ancient  Wilderness  Road  through  the 
valley  of  the  Yellow  Creek.  Many  a  time  since 
the  memory  of  that  ride  has  come  back  to  me 
— the  forests  of  magnificent  timbers,  open 
spaces  of  cleared  land  showing  the  amphithea- 
tre of  hills  in  the  purple  distance,  the  winding 
of  a  shadowy  green-banked  stream,  the  tran- 
quil loneliness,  the  purity  of  primeval  solitude. 
The  flitting  of  a  bird  between  one  and  the  azure 
sky  overhead  was  company,  a  wild  flower  bend- 
ing over  the  water's  edge  was  friendship.  Noth- 
274 


s  .  »  :• 


FORD    ON    THE   CUMBERLAND 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

ing  broke  rudely  in  upon  the  spirit  of  the  scene 
but  here  and  there  a  way-side  log-cabin,  with 
its  hopeless  squalor,  hopeless  human  inmates. 
If  imagination  sought  relief  from  loneliness,  it 
found  it  only  in  conjuring  from  the  dust  of  the 
road  that  innumerable  caravan  of  life  from 
barbarism  to  civilization,  from  the  savage  to 
the  soldier,  that  has  passed  hither  and  thither, 
leaving  the  wealth  of  nature  unravished,  its 
solitude  unbroken. 

In  the  hush  of  the  evening  and  amid  the  si- 
lence of  eternity,  I  drew  the  rein  of  my  tired 
horse  on  the  site  of  the  present  town.  Before 
me  in  the  mere  distance,  and  outlined  against 
the  glory  of  the  sky,  there  towered  at  last  the 
mighty  mountain  wall,  showing  the  vast  depres- 
sion of  the  gap — the  portal  to  the  greatness  of 
the  commonwealth.  Stretching  away  in  every 
direction  was  a  wide  plain,  broken  here  and 
there  by  wooded  knolls,  and  uniting  itself  with 
graceful  curves  to  the  gentle  slopes  of  the  sur- 
rounding mountains.  The  ineffable  beauty,  the 
vast  repose,  the  overawing  majesty  of  the  his- 
toric portal,  the  memories,  the  shadows — they 
are  never  to  be  forgotten. 

A  few  weeks  ago  I  reached  the  same  spot  as 

the  sun  was  rising,  having  come  thither  from 

Pineville  by  rail.     As  I  stepped  from  the  train 

I  saw  that  the  shadowy  valley  of  my  remem- 

275 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

brance  had  been  incredibly  transformed.  Some 
idea  of  the  plan  of  the  new  town  may  be  under- 
stood from  the  fact  that  Cumberland  Avenue 
and  Peterborough  Avenue,  intersecting  each 
other  near  the  central  point  of  it,  are,  when 
completed,  to  be  severally  three  and  a  half  or 
four  and  a  half  miles  long.  There  are  twenty 
avenues  and  thirty  streets  in  all,  ranging  from 
a  hundred  feet  to  sixty  feet  wide.  So  long  and 
broad  and  level  are  the  thoroughfares  that  the 
plan,  as  projected,  suggests  comparison  with 
Louisville.  The  valley  site  itself  contains  some 
six  thousand  available  acres. 

It  should  be  understood  that  the  company 
owns  property  on  the  Tennessee  side  of  the  gap, 
and  that  at  the  foot  of  the  valley,  where  a  mag- 
nificent spring  gushes  out,  with  various  other 
mineral  springs  near  by — chalybeate  and  sul- 
phur— it  is  proposed  to  establish  a  hotel,  sani- 
tarium, and  casino  which  shall  equal  in  sump- 
tuousness  the  most  noted  European  spas. 

As  I  stood  one  day  in  this  valley,  which  has 
already  begun  to  put  on  the  air  of  civilization, 
with  its  hotel  and  railway  station  and  mills  and 
pretty  homesteads,  I  saw  a  sight  which  seemed 
to  me  a  complete  epitome  of  the  past  and  pres- 
ent tendencies  there  at  work — a  summing  up 
of  the  past  and  a  prophecy  of  the  future.  Creep- 
ing slowly  past  the  station — so  slowly  that  one 
276 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

knows  not  what  to  compare  it  to  unless  it  be 
the  minute-hand  on  the  dial  of  a  clock — creep- 
ing slowly  along  the  Wilderness  Road  towards 
the  ascent  of  Cumberland  Gap,  there  came  a 
mountain  wagon,  faded  and  old,  with  its  dirty 
ragged  canvas  hanging  motionless,  and  drawn 
by  a  yoke  of  mountain  oxen  which  seemed  to 
be  moving  in  their  sleep.  On  the  seat  in  front, 
with  a  faded  shovel-hat  capping  his  mass  of 
coarse  tangled  hair,  and  wearing  but  two  other 
garments — a  faded  shirt  and  faded  breeches — 
sat  a  faded,  pinched,  and  meagre  mountain  boy. 
The  rope  with  which  he  drove  his'  yoke  had 
dropped  between  his  clasped  knees.  He  had 
forgotten  it ;  there  was  no  need  to  remember 
it.  His  starved  white  face  was  kindled  into  an 
expression  of  passionate  hunger  and  excite- 
ment. In  one  dirty  claw-like  hand  he  grasped 
a  small  paper  bag,  into  the  open  mouth  of  which 
he  had  thrust  the  other  hand,  as  a  miser  might 
thrust  his  into  a  bag  of  gold.  He  had  just 
bought,  with  a  few  cents,  some  sweetmeat  of 
civilization  which  he  was  about  for  the  first  time 
to  taste.  I  sat  and  watched  him  move  away 
and  begin  the  ascent  to  the  pass.  Slowly,  slow- 
ly, winding  now  this  way  and  now  that  across 
the  face  of  the  mountain,  now  hidden,  now  in 
sight,  they  went — sleeping  oxen,  crawling  wag- 
on, starved  mountain  child.  At  length,  as  they 
277 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

were  about  disappearing  through  the  gap,  they 
passed  behind  a  column  of  the  white  steam  from 
a  saw-mill  that  was  puffing  a  short  distance  in 
front  of  me  ;  and,  hidden  in  that  steam,  they 
disappeared.  It  was  the  last  of  the  mountain- 
eers passing  away  before  the  breath  of  civiliza- 
tion. 


IV 


SUPPOSE  now  that  you  stand  on  the  south 
side  of  the  great  wall  of  the  Cumberland 
Mountain  at  Cumberland  Gap.  You  have 
come  through  the  splendid  tunnel  beneath,  or 
you  have  crawled  over  the  summit  in  the  an- 
cient way ;  but  you  stand  at  the  base  on  the 
Tennessee  side  in  the  celebrated  Powell's  River 
Valley. 

Turn  to  the  left  and  follow  up  this  valley, 
keeping  the  mountain  on  your  left.  You  are 
not  the  first  to  take  this  course  :  the  line  of 
human  ants  used  to  creep  down  it  in  order  to 
climb  over  the  wall  at  the  gap.  Mark  how  in- 
accessible this  wall  is  at  every  other  point. 
Mark,  also,  that  as  you  go  two  little  black  par- 
allel iron  threads  follow  you — a  railroad,  one 
of  the  greatest  systems  of  the  South.  All 
along  the  mountain  slope  overhanging  the 
railroad,  iron  ore  ;  beyond  the  mountain  crest, 
timber  and  coals.  Observe,  likewise,  the  feat- 
ures of  the  land  :  water  abundant,  clear,  and 
279 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

cold  ;  fields  heavy  with  corn  and  oats  ;  an  ever- 
changing  panorama  of  beautiful  pictures.  The 
farther  you  go  the  more  rich  and  prosperous 
the  land,  the  kinder  the  soil  to  grains  and  gar- 
dens and  orchards ;  bearing  its  burden  of 
timbers  —  walnut,  chestnut,  oak,  and  mighty 
beeches ;  lifting  to  the  eye  in  the  near  distance 
cultivated  hill-sides  and  fat  meadows  ;  stretch- 
ing away  into  green  and  shadowy  valley  glades ; 
tuneful  with  swift,  crystal  streams — a  land  of 
lovely  views. 

Remember  well  this  valley,  lying  along  the 
base  of  the  mountain  wall.  It  has  long  been 
known  as  the  granary  of  southwest  Virginia 
and  east  Tennessee  ;  but  in  time,  in  the  devel- 
opment of  civilization  throughout  the  Appa- 
lachian region,  it  is  expected  to  become  the 
seat  of  a  dense  pastoral  population,  supplying 
the  dense  industrial  population  of  new  mining 
and  manufacturing  towns  with  milk,  butter, 
eggs,  and  fruit  and  vegetables.  But  for  the 
contiguity  of  such  agricultural  districts  to  the 
centres  of  ores  and  coals,  it  would  perhaps  be 
impossible  to  establish  in  these  remote  spots 
the  cities  necessary  to  develop  and  transport 
their  wealth. 

Follow  this  valley  up  for  a  distance  of  sixty 
miles  from  Cumberland  Gap  and  there  pause, 
for  you  come  to  the  head  of  the  valley,  and 
280 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

you  have  reached  another  pass  in  the  moun- 
tain wall.  You  have  passed  out  of  Tennessee 
into  Virginia,  a  short  distance  from  the  Ken- 
tucky border,  and  the  mountain  wall  is  no 
longer  called  the  Cumberland :  twenty  miles 
southwest  of  where  you  now  are  that  moun- 
tain divided,  sending  forth  this  southern 
prong,  called  Stone  Mountain,  and  sending 
the  rest  of  itself  between  the  State  line  of 
Kentucky  and  Virginia,  under  the  name  of 
the  Big  Black  Mountain.  Understand,  also, 
the  general  bearings  of  the  spot  at  which  you 
have  arrived.  It  is  in  that  same  Alleghany 
system  of  mountains  —  the  richest  metallifer- 
ous region  in  the  world — the  northern  section 
of  which  long  ago  made  Pittsburgh  ;  the  south- 
ern section  of  which  has  since  created  Birming- 
ham ;  and  the  middle  section  of  which,  where 
you  now  are,  is  claimed  by  expert  testimony, 
covering  a  long  period  of  years  and  coming 
from  different  and  wholly  uninterested  author- 
ities, to  be  the  richest  of  the  three. 

This  mountain  pass  not  being  in  Kentucky, 
it  might  be  asked  why  in  a  series  of  articles  on 
Kentucky  it  should  deserve  a  place.  The  an- 
swer is  plain  :  not  because  a  Kentuckian  se- 
lected it  as  the  site  of  a  hoped-for  city,  or  be- 
cause Kentuckians  have  largely  developed  it, 
or  because  Kentuckians  largely  own  it,  and 
281 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

have  stamped  upon  it  a  certain  excellent  social 
tone ;  but  for  the  reason  that  if  the  idea  of  its  de- 
velopment is  carried  out,  it  will  gather  towards 
itself  a  vast  net-work  of  railways  from  eastern 
Kentucky,  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  the  South, 
and  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  valleys,  which 
will  profoundly  affect  the  inner  life  of  Ken- 
tucky, and  change  its  relations  to  different 
parts  of  the  Union. 

Big  Stone  Gap  !  It  does  not  sound  very  big. 
What  is  it  ?  At  a  certain  point  of  this  contin- 
uation of  Cumberland  Mountain,  called  Stone 
Mountain,  the  main  fork  of  Powell's  River  has 
in  the  course  of  ages  worn  itself  a  way  down 
to  a  practical  railroad  pass  at  water-level,  thus 
opening  connection  between  the  coking  coal 
on  the  north  and  the  iron  ores  on  the  south  of 
the  mountain.  No  pass  that  I  have  ever  seen 
— except  those  made  by  the  Doe  River  in  the 
Cranberry  region  of  North  Carolina  —  has  its 
wild,  enrapturing  loveliness  ;  towering  above 
on  each  side  are  the  mountain  walls,  ancient 
and  gray  and  rudely  disordered ;  at  every 
coign  of  vantage  in  these,  grasping  their  pre- 
cipitous buttresses,  as  the  claw  of  a  great  eagle 
might  grasp  the  uttermost  brow  of  a  cliff, 
enormous  trees  above  trees,  and  amid  the  trees 
a  green  lace-work  of  undergrowth.  Below,  in 
a  narrow,  winding  channel  piled  high  with 
282 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

bowlders,  with  jutting  rocks  and  sluice  -  like 
fissures  —  below  and  against  these  the  river 
hurls  itself,  foaming,  roaring,  whirling,  a  long 
cascade  of  white  or  lucent  water.  This  is  Big 
Stone  Gap,  and  the  valley  into  which  the  river 
pours  its  full  strong  current  is  the  site  of  the 
town.  A  lofty  valley  it  is,  having  an  elevation 
of  1600  feet  above  the  sea,  with  mountains  gir- 
dling it  that  rise  to  the  height  of  4000 — a  val- 
ley the  surface  of  which  gently  rolls  and  slopes 
towards  these  encircling  bases  with  constant 
relief  to  the  eye,  and  spacious  enough,  with 
those  opening  into  it,  to  hold  a  city  of  the  pop- 
ulation of  New  York. 

This  mountain  pass,  lying  in  the  heart  of  this 
reserved  wilderness  of  timbers,  coals,  and  ores, 
has  always  had  its  slender  thread  of  local  his- 
tory. It  was  from  a  time  immemorial  a  buffalo 
and  Indian  trail,  leading  to  the  head-waters  of 
the  Cumberland  and  Kentucky  rivers  ;  during 
the  Civil  War  it  played  its  part  in  certain  local 
military  exploits  and  personal  adventures  of  a 
quixotian  flavor ;  and  of  old  the  rich  farmers 
of  Lee  County  used  to  drive  their  cattle  through 
it  to  fatten  on  the  pea-vine  and  blue-grass  grow- 
ing thick  on  the  neighboring  mountain  tops. 
But  in  the  last  twenty-five  years — that  quar- 
ter of  the  century  which  has  developed  in  the 
United  States  an  ever-growing  need  of  iron  and 
283 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

steel,  of  hard-woods,  and  of  all  varieties  of  coal ; 
a  period  which  has  seen  one  after  another  of  the 
reserve  timber  regions  of  the  country  thinned 
and  exhausted — during  the  past  twenty -five 
years  attention  has  been  turned  more  and 
more  towards  the  forests  and  the  coal-fields  in 
the  region  occupied  by  the  south  Alleghany 
Mountain  system. 

It  was  not  enough  to  know  that  at  Big  Stone 
Gap  there  is  a  water-gap  admitting  the  passage 
of  a  railway  on  each  side  at  water-level,  and 
connecting  contiguous  workable  coals  with 
ores ;  not  enough  repeatedly  to  test  the  abun- 
dance, variety,  and  purity  of  both  of  these ;  not 
enough  to  know  that  a  short  distance  off  a  sin- 
gle vertical  section  of  coal-measure  rocks  has  a 
thickness  above  drainage  level  of  2500  feet,  the 
thickest  in  the  entire  Appalachian  coal-field 
from  Pennsylvania  to  Alabama  ;  not  enough 
that  from  this  point,  by  available  railroad  to 
the  Bessemer  steel  ores  in  the  Cranberry  dis- 
trict of  North  Carolina,  it  is  the  shortest  dis- 
tance in  the  known  world  separating  such  coke 
and  such  ores  ;  not  enough  that  there  are  here 
superabundant  limestone  and  water,  the  south 
fork  of  Powell's  River  winding  about  the  val- 
ley, a  full,  bold  current,  and  a  few  miles  from 
the  town  the  head-waters  of  this  same  river 
having  a  fall  of  700  feet ;  not  enough  that  near 
284 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

by  is  a  rich  agricultural  region  to  supply  need- 
ed markets,  and  that  the  valley  itself  has  a 
natural  drainage,  delightful  climate,  and  ideal 
beauty — all  this  was  not  enough.  It  had  to  be 
known  that  the  great  water-gap  through  the 
mountain  at  this  point,  by  virtue  of  its  position 
and  by  virtuepf  its  relation  to  other  passes  and 
valleys  leading  to  it,  necessitated,  sooner  or 
later,  a  concentration  here  of  railroad  lines  for 
the  gathering,  the  development,  and  the  distri- 
bution of  its  resources. 

From  every  imaginable  point  of  view  a  place 
like  this  is  subject  to  unsparing  test  before  it 
is  finally  fixed  upon  as  a  town  site  and  enters 
upon  a  process  of  development.  Nothing  would 
better  illustrate  the  tremendous  power  with 
which  the  new  South,  hand  in  hand  with  a 
new  North,  works  with  brains  and  capital  and 
science.  A  few  years  ago  this  place  was  seventy 
miles  from  the  nearest  railroad.  That  road 
has  since  been  built  to  it  from  the  south  ;  a 
second  is  approaching  it  from  a  distance  of  a 
hundred  and  twenty  miles  on  the  west ;  a  third 
from  the  east ;  and  when  the  last  two  come  to- 
gether this  point  will  be  on  a  great  east  and 
west  trunk  line,  connecting  the  Ohio  and  Mis- 
sissippi valleys  with  the  Atlantic  seaboard. 
Moreover,  the  Legislature  of  Kentucky  has  just 
passed  an  act  incorporating  the  Inter-State 
285 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

Tunnel  Railroad  Company,  and  empowering  it 
to  build  an  inter-State  double-track  highway 
from  the  head-waters  of  the  Cumberland  and 
Kentucky  rivers  to  Big  Stone  Gap,  tunnelling 
both  the  Black  and  Cumberland  Mountains,  and 
affording  a  passway  north  and  south  for  the 
several  railways  of  eastern  Kentucky  already 
heading  towards  this  point.  The  plan  embraces 
two  double-track  toll  tunnels,  with  double-track 
approaches  between  and  on  each  side  of  the 
tunnel,  to  be  owned  and  controlled  by  a  stock 
company  which  shall  allow  all  railroads  to  pass 
on  the  payment  of  toll.  If  this  enterprise,  in- 
volving the  cost  of  over  two  million  dollars,  is 
carried  out,  the  railroad  problem  at  Big  Stone 
Gap,  and  with  it  the  problem  of  developing 
the  mineral  wealth  of  southwest  Virginia  and 
southeast  Kentucky,  would  seem  to  be  prac- 
tically solved. 

That  so  many  railroads  should  be  approach- 
ing this  point  from  so  many  different  directions 
seems  to  lift  it  at  once  to  a  position  of  extraor- 
dinary importance. 

But  it  is  only  a  few  months  since  the  nearest 
one  reached  there ;  and,  since  little  could  be 
done  towards  development  otherwise,  at  Big 
Stone  Gap  one  sees  the  process  of  town-making 
at  an  earlier  stage  than  at  Middlesborough. 
Still,  there  are  under  construction  water- works, 
286 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

from  the  pure  mountain  river,  at  an  elevation 
of  400  feet,  six  miles  from  town,  that  will  sup- 
ply daily  2,500,000  gallons  of  water  ;  two  iron- 
furnaces  of  a  hundred  tons  daily  capacity  ;  an 
electric-light  plant,  starting  with  fifty  street 
arc-lights,  and  750  incandescent  burners  for 
residences,  and  a  colossal  hotel  of  300  rooms. 
These  may  be  taken  as  evidences  of  the  vast 
scale  on  which  development  is  to  be  carried  for- 
ward, to  say  nothing  of  a  steam  street  railway, 
belt  line,  lumber  and  brick  and  finishing  plants, 
union  depot,  and  a  coke  plant  modelled  after 
that  at  Connellsville.  And  on  the  whole  it 
may  be  said  that  already  over  a  million  dollars' 
worth  of  real  estate  has  been  sold,  and  that 
eight  land,  coal,  and  iron  development  com- 
panies have  centred  here  the  development  of 
properties  aggregating  millions  in  value. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  these  industrial  towns 
thus  being  founded  in  one  of  the  most  beauti- 
ful mountain  regions  of  the  land  that  they  shall 
not  merely  be  industrial  towns.  They  aim  at 
becoming  cities  or  homes  for  the  best  of  peo- 
ple ;  fresh  centres  to  which  shall  be  brought 
the  newest  elements  of  civilization  from  the 
North  and  South ;  retreats  for  jaded  pleasure- 
seekers  ;  asylums  for  invalids.  And  therefore 
they  are  laid  out  for  amenities  and  beauty  as 
well  as  industry — with  an  eye  to  using  the  ex- 
287 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

quisite  mountain  flora  and  park  -  like  forests, 
the  natural  boulevards  along  their  water- 
courses, and  the  natural  roadways  to  vistas 
of  enchanting  mountain  scenery.  What  is  to 
be  done  at  Middlesborough  will  not  be  forgot- 
ten. At  Big  Stone  Gap,  in  furtherance  of  this 
idea,  there  has  been  formed  a  Mountain  Park 
Association,  which  has  bought  some  three 
thousand  acres  of  summit  land  a  few  miles 
from  the  town,  with  the  idea  of  making  it  a 
game  preserve  and  shooting  park,  adorned 
with  a  rambling  club-house  in  the  Swiss  style 
of  architecture.  In  this  preserve  is  High  Knob, 
perhaps  the  highest  mountain  in  the  Alleghany 
range,  being  over  four  thousand  feet  above 
sea-level,  the  broad  summit  of  which  is  car- 
peted with  blue-grass  and  white  clover  in  the 
midst  of  magnificent  forest  growth. 


SUPPOSE  once  more  that  you  stand  out- 
side the  Cumberland  or  Stone  Mountain 
at  the  gap.  Now  turn  and  follow  down 
the  beautiful  Powell's  Valley,  retracing  your 
course  to  Cumberland  Gap.  Pass  this,  con- 
tinuing down  the  same  valley,  and  keeping  on 
your  right  the  same  parallel  mountain  wall. 
Mark  once  more  how  inaccessible  it  is  at  every 
point.  Mark  once  more  the  rich  land  and  pros- 
perous tillage.  Having  gone  about  thirty  miles 
beyond  Cumberland  Gap,  pause  again.  You 
have  come  to  another  pass — another  remarkable 
gateway.  You  have  travelled  out  of  Kentucky 
into  Tennessee,  and  the  Cumberland  Mountain 
has  changed  its  name  and  become  Walden's 
Mountain,  distant  some  fifteen  miles  from  the 
Kentucky  State  line. 

It  is  necessary  once  more  to  define  topo- 
graphical bearings.  Running  northeast  and 
southwest  is  this  Cumberland  Mountain,  hav- 
ing an  elevation  of  from  twenty-five  hundred 

T  289 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

to  three  thousand  feet.  Almost  parallel  with 
it,  from  ten  to  twenty  miles  away,  and  having 
an  elevation  of  about  two  thousand  feet,  lies 
Pine  Mountain,  in  Kentucky.  In  the  outer  or 
Cumberland  Mountain  it  has  now  been  seen 
that  there  are  three  remarkable  gaps  :  Big 
Stone  Gap  on  the  east,  where  Powell's  River 
cuts  through  Stone  Mountain  ;  Cumberland 
Gap  intermediate,  which  is  not  a  water -gap, 
but  a  depression  in  the  mountain ;  and  Big 
Creek  Gap  in  the  west,  where  Big  Creek  cuts 
through  Walden's  Mountain  —  the  last  being 
about  forty  miles  distant  from  the  second, 
about  ninety  from  the  first.  Now  observe  that 
in  Pine  Mountain  there  are  three  water-gaps 
having  a  striking  relation  to  the  gaps  in  the 
Cumberland — that  is,  behind  Cumberland  Gap 
is  the  pass  at  Pineville  ;  behind  Big  Stone  Gap 
and  beyond  it  at  the  end  of  the  mountain  are 
the  Breaks  of  Sandy ;  and  behind  Big  Creek 
Gap  are  the  Narrows,  a  natural  water-gap  con- 
necting Tennessee  with  Kentucky. 

But  it  has  been  seen  that  the  English  have 
had  to  tunnel  Cumberland  Mountain  at  Mid- 
dlesborough  in  order  to  open  the  valley  between 
Pine  and  Cumberland  mountains  to  railroad 
connections  with  the  south.  It  has  also  been 
seen  that  at  Big  Stone  Gap  it  has  been  found 
necessary  to  plan  for  a  vast  tunnel  under  Big 
290 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

Black  Mountain,  and  also  under  Pine  Moun- 
tain, in  order  to  establish  north  and  south  con- 
nections for  railroads,  and  control  the  devel- 
opment of  southeast  Kentucky  and  southwest 
Virginia.  But  now  mark  the  advantage  of  the 
situation  at  Big  Creek  Gap:  a  water -gap  at 
railroad  level  giving  entrance  from  the  south, 
and  seventeen  miles  distant  a  corresponding 
water -gap  at  railroad  level  giving  exit  from 
the  south  and  entrance  from  the  north.  There 
is  thus  afforded  a  double  natural  gateway  at 
this  point,  and  at  this  point  alone — an  inesti- 
mable advantage.  Here,  then,  is  discovered  a 
third  district  centre  in  Cumberland  Mountain 
where  the  new  industrial  civilization  of  the 
South  is  expected  to  work.  All  the  general 
conditions  elsewhere  stated  are  here  found 
present  —  timbers,  coals,  and  ores,  limestone, 
granite,  water,  scenery,  climate,  flora  ;  the 
beauty  is  the  same,  the  wealth  not  less. 

With  a  view  to  development,  a  company 
has  bought  up  and  owns  in  fee  20,000  acres 
of  coal  lands  and  some  seven  thousand  of 
iron  ore  in  the  valley  and  along  the  foot- 
hills on  the  southern  slope  of  the  mountain. 
They  have  selected  and  platted  as  a  town 
site  over  sixteen  hundred  acres  of  beautiful 
valley  land,  lying  on  both  sides  of  Big  Creek 
where  it  cuts  through  the  mountain,  1200 
291 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

feet  above  the  sea  -  level.  But  here  again 
one  comes  upon  the  process  of  town-making 
at  a  still  earlier  stage  of  development.  That 
is,  the  town  exists  only  on  paper,  and  im- 
provement has  not  yet  begun.  Taken  now, 
it  is  in  the  stage  that  Middlesborough,  or  Big 
Stone  Gap,  was  once  in.  So  that  it  should 
not  be  thought  any  the  less  real  because  it 
is  rudimentary  or  embryonic.  A  glance  at 
the  wealth  tributary  to  this  point  will  soon 
dispel  doubt  that  here  in  the  future,  as  at  the 
other  strategic  mountain  passes  of  the  Cum- 
berland, 13  to  be  established  an  important 
town. 

Only  consider  that  the  entire  20,000  acres 
owned  by  the  Big  Creek  Gap  Company  are 
underlain  by  coal,  and  that  the  high  mountains 
between  the  Pine  and  Cumberland  contain 
vertical  sections  of  greater  thickness  of  coal- 
measure  rocks  than  are  to  be  found  anywhere 
else  in  the  vast  Appalachian  field ;  that  Wal- 
nut Mountain,  on  the  land  of  the  company — 
the  western  continuation  of  the  Black  Moun- 
tain and  the  Log  Mountain  of  Kentucky — is 
3300  feet  above  sea,  and  has  2000  feet  of  coal- 
measures  above  drainage  ;  and  that  already 
there  has  been  developed  the  existence  of  six 
coals  of  workable  thickness  above  drainage 
level,  five  of  them  underlying  the  entire  20,000 
292 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

acres,  except  where  small  portions  have  been 
cut  away  by  the  streams. 

The  lowest  coal  above  drainage — the  Sharpe 
— presents  an  outcrop  about  twenty  feet  above 
the  bed  of  the  stream,  and  underlies  the  entire 
purchase.  It  has  long  been  celebrated  for 
domestic  use  in  the  locality.  An  entry  driven 
in  about  sixty  feet  shows  a  twelve-inch  cannel- 
coal  with  a  five-inch  soft  shale,  burning  with  a 
brilliant  flame,  and  much  used  in  Powell's 
Valley  ;  also  a  bituminous  coal  of  forty-three- 
inch  thickness,  having  a  firm  roof,  cheaply  min- 
able,  and  yielding  a  coke  of  over  93  per  cent, 
pure  carbon. 

The  next  coal  above  is  a  cannel-coal  having 
an  outcrop  on  the  Middle  Fork  of  Big  Creek 
of  thirty-six  inches,  and  on  the  north  slope  of 
the  mountains,  six  miles  off,  of  thirty-eight 
inches,  showing  a  persistent  bed  throughout. 

Above  this  is  the  Douglass  coal,  an  entry  of 
forty  feet  into  which  shows  a  thickness  of  fifty 
inches,  with  a  good  roof,  and  on  the  northern 
slope  of  the  mountains,  at  Cumberland  River, 
a  thickness  of  sixty  inches.  This  is  a  gas  coal 
of  great  excellence,  yielding  also  a  coke,  good, 
but  high  in  sulphur.  Above  the  Douglass 
is  an  unexplored  section  of  great  thickness, 
showing  coal  stains  and  coals  exposed,  but  un- 
developed. 

293 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

The  uppermost  coal  discovered,  and  the  high- 
est opened  in  Tennessee — the  Walnut  Moun- 
tain coal — is  a  coking  variety  of  superior  qual- 
ity, fifty-eight  inches  thick,  and,  though  lying 
near  the  top  of  the  mountain,  protected  by  a 
sandstone  roof.  It  is  minable  at  a  low  cost, 
admirable  for  gas,  and  is  here  found  underly- 
ing some  two  thousand  acres. 

As  to  the  wealth  of  iron  ores,  it  has  been 
said  that  the  company  owns  about  seven  thou- 
sand acres  in  the  valley  and  along  the  southern 
slopes  of  Cumberland  Mountain.  There  is  a 
continuous  outcrop  of  the  soft  red  fossilifer- 
ous,  or  Clinton,  iron  ore,  ten  miles  long,  no- 
where at  various  outcrops  less  than  sixty  inches 
thick,  of  exceptional  richness  and  purity,  well 
located  for  cheap  mining,  and  adjacent  to  the 
coal-beds.  Indeed,  where  it  crosses  Big  Creek 
at  the  gap,  it  is  only  a  mile  from  the  coking 
coal.  Lying  from  one  to  two  hundred  feet 
above  the  drainage  level  of  the  valley,  where 
a  railroad  is  to  be  constructed,  and  parallel 
to  this  road  at  a  distance  of  a  few  hundred 
feet,  this  ore  can  be  put  on  cars  and  delivered 
to  the  furnaces  of  Big  Creek  Gap  at  an  esti- 
mated cost  of  a  dollar  a  ton.  Of  red  ore  two 
beds  are  known  to  be  present. 

Parallel  and  near  to  the  red  fossiliferous, 
there  has  been  developed  along  the  base  of 
294 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

Cumberland  Mountain  a  superior  brown  ore, 
the  Limonite — the  same  as  that  used  in  the 
Low  Moor,  Longdale,  and  other  furnaces  of  the 
Clifton  Forge  district.  This— the  Oriskany— 
has  been  traced  to  within  ten  miles  of  the 
company's  lands,  and  there  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that  it  will  be  developed  on  them.  At 
the  beginning  of  this  article  it  was  stated  that 
iron  of  superior  quality  was  formerly  made  at 
Big  Creek  Gap,  and  found  a  ready  market 
throughout  central  Kentucky. 

Parallel  with  the  ore  and  easily  quarriable 
is  the  subcarboniferous  limestone,  one  thick 
stratum  of  which  contains  98  per  cent,  of  car- 
bonate of  lime ;  so  that,  with  liberal  allowance 
for  the  cost  of  crude  material,  interest,  wear 
and  tear,  it  is  estimated  that  iron  can  here  be 
made  at  as  low  a  cost  as  anywhere  in  the 
United  States,  and  that  furnaces  will  have  an 
advantage  in  freight  in  reaching  the  markets  of 
the  Ohio  Valley  and  the  farther  South.  More- 
over, the  various  timbers  of  this  region  attain 
a  perfection  seldom  equalled,  and  by  a  little 
clearing  out  of  the  stream,  logs  can  be  floated 
at  flood  tides  to  the  Clinch  and  Tennessee 
rivers.  To-day  mills  are  shipping  these  tim- 
bers from  Boston  to  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

Situated  in  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of 
valleys,  1200  feet  above  sea-level,  surrounded 
295 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

by  park-like  forests  and  fertile  valley  lands, 
having  an  abundance  of  pure  water  and  per- 
fect drainage,  with  iron  ore  only  a  mile  from 
coke,  and  a  double  water-gap  giving  easy  pas- 
sage for  railroads.  Big  Creek  Gap  develops 
peculiar  strength  and  possibilities  of  impor- 
tance, when  its  relation  is  shown  to  those  cities 
which  will  be  its  natural  markets,  and  to  the 
systems  of  railroads  of  which  it  will  be  the 
inevitable  outlet.  Within  twenty  miles  of  it 
lie  three  of  the  greatest  railroad  systems  of 
the  South.  It  is  but  thirty  -  eight  miles  from 
Knoxville,  and  eight  miles  of  low-grade  road, 
through  a  fertile  blue-grass  valley,  peopled  by 
intelligent,  prosperous  farmers,  will  put  it  in 
connection  with  magnetic  and  specular  ores  for 
the  making  of  steel,  or  with  the  mountain  of 
Bessemer  ore  at  Cranberry.  Its  coke  is  about 
three  hundred  miles  nearer  to  the  Sheffield 
and  Decatur  furnaces  than  the  Pocahontas 
coke,  which  is  now  being  shipped  to  them.  It 
is  nearer  St.  Louis  and  Chicago  than  their 
present  sources  of  supply.  It  is  the  nearest 
point  to  the  great  coaling-station  for  steam- 
ships now  building  at  Brunswick.  And  it  is 
one  of  the  nearest  bases  of  supply  for  Pensa- 
cola,  which  in  turn  is  the  nearest  port  of  sup- 
ply for  Central  and  South  America. 
No  element  of  wealth  or  advantage  of  posi- 
296 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

tion  seems  lacking  to  make  this  place  one  of 
the  controlling  points  of  that  vast  commercial 
movement  which  is  binding  the  North  and  the 
South  together,  and  changing  the  relation  of 
Kentucky  to  both,  by  making  it  the  great  high- 
way of  railway  connection,  the  fresh  centre  of 
manufacture  and  distribution,  and  the  lasting 
fountain-head  of  mineral  supply. 


VI 


A  TTENTION  is  thus  briefly  directed  to 
/\  that  line  of  towns  which  are  springing 
-^  ^  up,or  will  in  time  spring  up,  in  the  moun- 
tain passes  of  the  Cumberland,  and  are  making 
the  backwoods  of  Kentucky  the  fore-front  of  a 
new  civilization.  Through  these  three  passes 
in  the  outer  wall  of  Cumberland  Mountain, 
and  through  that  pass  at  Pineville  in  the  inner 
wall  behind  Cumberland  Gap — through  these 
four  it  is  believed  that  there  must  stream  the 
railroads  carrying  to  the  South  its  timbers  and 
coals ;  to  the  North  its  timbers,  coal,  and  iron  ; 
and  carrying  to  both  from  these  towns,  as  in- 
dependent centres  of  manufacture,  all  those 
products  the  crude  materials  of  which  exist  in 
economic  combinations  on  the  spot. 

It  is  idle  to  say  that  all  these  places  cannot 
become  important.  The  competition  will  be 
keen,  and  the  fittest  will  survive ;  but  all  these 
are  fit  to  survive,  each  having  advantages  of 
its  own.  Big  Stone  Gap  lies  so  much  nearer 
298 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

the  East  and  the  Atlantic  seaboard ;  Big 
Creek  Gap  so  much  nearer  the  West  and  the 
Ohio  and  Mississippi  valleys  and  the  Lakes ; 
Cumberland  Gap  and  Pineville  so  much  near- 
er an  intermediate  region. 

But  as  the  writer  has  stated,  it  is  the  human, 
not  the  industrial,  problem  to  be  solved  by 
this  development  that  possessed  for  him  the 
main  interest.  One  seems  to  see  in  the  per- 
foration and  breaking  up  of  Cumberland 
Mountain  an  event  as  decisive  of  the  destiny 
of  Kentucky  as  though  the  vast  wall  had  fall- 
en, destroying  the  isolation  of  the  State,  bring- 
ing into  it  the  new,  and  letting  the  old  be 
scattered  until  it  is  lost.  But  while  there  is  no 
space  here  to  deal  with  those  changes  that  are 
rapidly  passing  over  Kentucky  life  and  obliter- 
ating old  manners  and  customs,  old  types  of 
character  and  ideals  of  life,  old  virtues  and 
graces  as  well  as  old  vices  and  horrors — there 
is  a  special  topic  too  closely  connected  with 
the  foregoing  facts  not  to  be  considered :  the 
effect  of  this  development  upon  the  Kentucky 
mountaineers. 

The  buying  up  of  the  mountain  lands  has 
unsettled  a  large  part  of  these  people.  Al- 
ready there  has  been  formed  among  them  a 
class  of  tenants  paying  rent  and  living  in  their 
old  homes.  But  in  the  main  there  are  three 
299 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

movements  among  them.  Some  desert  the 
mountains  altogether,  and  descend  to  the  Blue- 
grass  Region  with  a  passion  for  farming.  On 
county-court  days  in  blue-grass  towns  it  has 
been  possible  of  late  to  notice  this  peculiar  type 
mingling  in  the  market-places  with  the  tradi- 
tional type  of  blue-grass  farmer.  There  is  thus 
going  on,  especially  along  the  border  counties, 
a  quiet  interfusion  of  the  two  human  elements 
of  the  Kentucky  highlander  and  the  Kentucky 
lowlander,  so  long  distinct  in  blood,  physique, 
history,  and  ideas  of  life.  To  less  extent,  the 
mountaineers  go  farther  west,  beginning  life 
again  beyond  the  Mississippi. 

A  second  general  tendency  among  them  is 
to  be  absorbed  by  the  civilization  that  is 
springing  up  in  the  mountains.  They  flock  to 
these  towns,  keep  store,  are  shrewd  and  active 
speculators  in  real  estate,  and  successful  de- 
velopers of  small  capital.  The  first  business 
house  put  up  in  the  new  Pineville  was  built  by 
a  mountaineer. 

But  the  third,  and,  as  far  as  can  be  learned, 
the  most  general  movement  among  them  is  to 
retire  at  the  approach  of  civilization  to  remot- 
er regions  of  the  mountains,  where  they  may 
live  without  criticism  or  observation  their  he- 
reditary, squalid,  unambitious,  stationary  life. 
But  to  these  retreats  they  must  in  time  be 
300 


Mountain  Passes  of  the  Cumberland 

followed,  therefrom  dislodged,  and  again  set 
going.  Thus  a  whole  race  of  people  are  being 
scattered,  absorbed,  civilized.  You  may  go  far 
before  you  will  find  a  fact  so  full  of  conse- 
quences to  the  future  of  the  State. 

Within  a  few  years  the  commonwealth  of 
Kentucky  will  be  a  hundred  years  old.  All  in 
all,  it  would  seem  that  with  the  close  of  its 
first  century  the  old  Kentucky  passes  away  ; 
and  that  the  second  century  will  bring  in  a 
new  Kentucky — new  in  many  ways,  but  new 
most  of  all  on  account  of  the  civilization  of  the 
Cumberland. 


THB  END 


THE  CHOIR  INVISIBLE 


BY 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

Cloth.     i2ino.     $1.50.     New  edition  with  illustra- 
tions by  Orson  Lowell,  $2.50 


••  One  reads  the  story  for  the  story's  sake,  and  then  re-reads  the 
book  out  of  pure  delight  in  its  beauty.    The  story  is  American  to 

the  very  core Mr.  Allen  stands  to-day  in  the  front  rank  of 

American  novelists.  '  The  Choir  Invisible '  will  solidify  a  reputation 
already  established  and  bring  into  clear  light  his  rare  gifts  as  an 
artist  For  this  latest  story  is  as  genuine  a  work  of  art  as  has  come 
from  an  American  hand."  —  Hamilton  Mabie  in  The  Outlook. 

"  The  humor  and  grace  .  ,  .  we  have  had  in  our  fiction ;  the  pu- 
rity of  tone  also.  ,  .  .  But  the  imaginative  beauty  which  lies  deep  at 
the  root  of  things  .  .  .  this  is  a  rarer  grace,  a  more  enduring  quality 
of  fine  literature.  .  .  .  This  beauty  has  lain  in  other  books  by  Mr. 
Allen,  but  in  none,  we  think,  has  it  been  under  such  high  command 
as  in  this."  —  TAe  Atlantic  Monthly, 

"Highly  praised  and  with  reason.  It  is  written  with  singular 
delicacy  and  has  an  old  world  fi-agrance  which  seems  to  come  from 
the  classics  we  keep  in  lavender."  —  From  the  Daily  Chronicle,  Lon- 
don. 

"  There  are  descriptive  passages  so  exquisitely  wrought  that  the 
reader  lingers  over  them  to  make  them  a  possession  forever ;  there 
are  inner  experiences  so  intensely  realized  that  they  become  a  part 
of  the  life  of  his  own  soul."  —  The  Dial,  Chicago. 

"  He  has  given  us  something  strong,  deep,  reverential,  that  will 
teach  us  how  to  live."  —  The  Bookman. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

Ce  FIFTH  AVXITDE.  HIDW  YORK 


SUMMER  IN  ARCADY 

A  TALE  OF  NATURE 

BY 

JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

Auikor^**A  Kentucky  Cardinal,"  "  Aftermath^'  "  The  Blue  Gram 

Region  of  Kentucky"  etc. 

i6ino.    Cloth.    $1.25 


"This  story  by  James  Lane  Allen  is  one  of  the  gems  of  the 
season.  It  is  artistic  in  its  setting,  realistic  and  true  to  nature 
and  life  in  its  descriptions,  dramatic,  pathetic,  tragic,  in  its  in- 
cidents; indeed,  a  veritable  gem  that  must  become  classic.  It 
is  difficult  to  give  an  outline  of  the  story;  it  is  one  of  the  stories 
which  do  not  outline;  it  must  be  read."  —  Boston  Daily  Adver- 
tiser, 

"The  close  communion  and  sympathy  with  Nature,  and  the 
noble  interpretation  of  her  wayward  moods  and  changing 
phases,  manifested  in  *  A  Kentucky  Cardinal '  and  *  Aftermath ' 
find  nobler,  sweeter,  ampler  expression  in  the  luminous,  sunlit, 
sun-flushed  pages  of  his  new  story."  —  The  Bookman. 

"  The  book  continually  gladdens  the  aesthetic  sense  with  its 
luxurious  and  chaste  objective  imagery.  It  shows  a  marked 
advance  in  the  author's  power  of  vivid  dialogue,  and  though 
the  nature  of  its  materials  will  prevent  its  being  called  the  most 
beautiful  of  his  stories,  it  is  yet  likely  to  attain  the  widest  cir- 
culation and  to  be  a  stepping-stone  to  higher  things."  —  Thi 
Chicago  Tribune, 

THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENDX,    HEW  TOKK 


NEIV  EDITIONS 

The  Blue  Grass  Region  of  Kentucky 

By  James  Lane  Allen 

Cloth,  i2mo.    Illustrated.    ^1.50 

**  *  The  simple,  rural  key-note  of  life  is  still  the  sweetest,*  he  had  writtea 
In  the  opening  pages  of  'The  Blue  Grass  Region  of  Kentucky';  and  it  is 
this  note  which,  played  on  the  pipes  of  Pan  in  ever-recurring  and  fresh 
variations,  yields  the  sweetest  music,  and,  touched  with  the  breath  of  his 
passion  for  nature,  is  transmuted  into  those  '  invisible  flowers  of  sound* 
which  lie  pressed  between  his  pages."—  TAe  Bookman. 

Flute  and  Violin, 
and  other  Kentucky  Tales  and  Romances 

By  James  Lane  Allen 

Ooth,  i2mo.    Illustrated.    $1.50 

"  He  takes  us  into  a  green  and  fragrant  world  in  that  Kentucky  home  ol 
his  which  he  has  shared  with  us  so  genially  and  delightfully  before  now.  No 
one  has  made  more  of  a  native  region  than  he  —  more  beauty  and  more 
attractiveness.  He  has  done  for  the  blue  grass  country  what  Miss  Wilkins 
has  done  for  New  England,  what  Hamlin  Garland  has  done  for  some  parts 
of  the  yf est."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

A  Kentucky  Cardinal 

By  James  Lane  Allen 

Goth,  i2mo.    Illustrated.    |i.oo 

•*  A  narrative,  told  with  nsuve  simplicity  in  the  first  person,  of  how  a  man 
who  was  devoted  to  his  fruits  and  flowers  and  birds  came  to  fall  in  love  with 
a  fair  neighbor  who  treated  him  at  first  with  whimsical  raillery  and  coquetry, 
and  who  finally  put  his  love  to  the  supreme  tesL'*  —  N^.  Y.  Tribune, 

Aftermath 

A  Sequel  to  "A  Kentucky  Cardinal" 

By  James  Lane  Allen 

Goth,  i2mo.    Illustrated.    $\.QO 

**  The  perfect  simplicity  of  all  the  episodes,  the  gentleness  of  spirit,  and 
the  old-time  courtesy,  the  poetry  of  it  sdl,  with  a  gleam  of  humor  on  almost 
every  page."  —  Life, 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIVTH  AVmUB,  ITEW  TOBK 


RICHARD  CARVEL 

BY 
WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

Author  of  The  Celebrity 

Cloth.    lamo.    $1.50 


•*  •  Richard  Carvel '  is  the  most  extensive  piece  of  semi-historicaj 
fiction  which  has  yet  come  from  an  American  hand ;  it  is  on  a  larger 
scale  than  any  of  its  predecessors,  and  the  skill  with  which  the  ma- 
terials have  been  handled  justifies  the  largeness  of  the  plan." 

—  Hamilton  Mabie  in  the  New  York  Times. 

** '  Richard  Carvel '  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  works  of  imagina- 
tion of  the  decade.  It  breathes  the  spirit  of  true  romance  ...  in 
a  way  that  is  truly  fascinating."  —  Philadelphia  Press. 

"  A  rich,  fine  romance,  full  of  heart  and  action  throbbing  with 
the  indomitable  force  of  liberty,  is  this  book  of  Winston  Churchill. 
It  sets  the  blood  to  tingling  .  .  .  and  above  all  it  thrills  one  with  the 
spirit  that  made  the  colonies  free  and  which  has  preserved  to  this 
day,  and  which  will  preserve  for  all  time  to  come,  the  life  of  a  glorious 
freedom.'  * — Louisville  Times. 

"'Richard  Carvel'  seems,  verily,  to  possess  every  quality  that 
goes  to  make  a  genuinely  great  work  of  fiction.  It  has  the  reassuring 
solidity  and  the  charming  quaintness  of  '  Henry  Esmond '  or  '  The 
Virginians,'  with  an  additional  zest  that  must  perforce  be  the  author's 
own." — New  York  Home  Journal. 

"  We  have  nothing  but  praise  for  the  story  ...  a  captivating  one ; 
the  dramatic  movement  stirring  and  effective.  ...  In  a  word,  it  is 
long  since  we  read  a  more  thoroughly  acceptable  historical  romance 
than  •  Richard  CarveL' "—  The  Independent, 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVBiroX,  HSW  YORK 


THE  CELEBRITY 

AN  EPISODE 

BY 

WmSTON  CHURCHILL 
Crown  8yo.    Cloth.    $1.50 


••  One  of  the  best  stories  that  has  come  from  the  presses  in  Ae 
last  six  months.  The  plot  is  novel,  the  central  idea  clear,  and  the 
incidents  are  worked  out  with  a  degree  of  skill  and  good  taste  that 
are  eminently  satisfactory.  Its  quiet  humor  is  one  of  its  best  quali- 
ties." —  The  Brooklyn  Eagle. 

"  No  such  piece  of  inimitable  comedy,  in  a  literary  way,  has  ap- 
peared for  years.  ...    It  is  the  purest,  keenest  fun." 

—  Inter-Ocean,  Chicago. 

"This  is  a  delightfully  entertaining  novel,  and  it  is  seldom  that 
one  of  such  masterly  qualities,  by  a  new  author,  wins  its  way  to 
public  favor  as  this  is  sure  to  do."  —  Boston  Courier. 

"  It  is  an  extremely  clever  piece  of  work  that  is  hkely  to  be  as 
popular  as  it  deserves."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

" '  The  Celebrity '  is  an  admirable  novel,  ingeniously  conceived, 
and  brightly  written.  The  plot  is  handled  with  great  ingenuity,  and 
it  is  more  than  usually  interesting  and  it  artistically  leads  up  to  an 
unexpected  climax  that  is  most  elaborately  prepared  for.  The 
characters  are  all  firmly  outlined  and  they  seem  to  be  studies  from 
life.  We  cordially  commend  this  very  bright  and  entertaining  novel ; 
it  is  the  work  of  a  sound  and  original  artist." 

—  Boston  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

"  A  novel  of  undoubted  strength  and  originality.  There  is  a  vein 
of  humor  and  a  tone  of  romance  in  it  and  it  is  fascinating  froro 
beginning  to  end."  —  Rochester  Democrat. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUS,  HSW  YORK 


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